A day in the sun

Woke today to glorious weather and made my way into Strasbourg for about 10am. 1st stop was for a hot chocolate in a cafe opposite the cathedral followed by a look around the cathedral itself. This was a treat in that there was no entrance fee, this made a nice change I must admit. The interior is superb, but this time I will not bore you with the photohraphs that I took.


After the cathedral I made my way down to the river and booked myself onto the 11am run around the river. This lasts some 70 minutes and has a commentry, although cloth ears here though he heard channel 3 for the English version, then heard channel 13, si I selected channel 13 and heard the childrens version for the first 5 minutes...all "ahoy me hearties" and references to a parrot, most strange I thought, before trying channel 3 and finding the correct commentry. I could not resist this picture of St Pauls Church, have you ever seen so much scaffholding?

This is the Tanners House in the area called Petit France, which was the area of the town where all the trades people lived. The upper floor of the building is all open and was used as an area to spread the hides for drying after they had been cleansed in the river water.

The building above was apparently the most famous laundry in the town where all the rich folk had their washing done in the river. The poorer people had to wash downstream, the only problem was that if the rich folks washing got swept down stream, the laundry owners had to pay the poorer people in order to get it back.

What was not pointed out on the boat trip, but was fairly obvious, was that the Tanners House was upstream from the laundry, so that obviously meant that they used the water first, then the laundry for the rich people, so just how clean were the clothes after the washing, especially as tanners also use human and animal urine in the tanning process?????

The boat trip also took us past the EU parliment buildings, some of which you can see below. The first building is the front one, but then as the EU has grown, the rotunda was built behind it for the overflow. The rotunda is donut shaped apparently, and the inner courtyard is full of trees and lawns, sounds like a nice enviroment to work in. I love old buildings but I also like modern buildings made of glass, and I was impressed with the design of these buildings.

Following the boat tour, I had a wander around the old town before popping into a shop to buy some fruit and a baguette for my lunch, which I ate under the shade of a weeping willow in the shade as it was now about 28 degrees. Whilst I ate a family of swans swam along and stopped for a spruce up, it looked as if this one needed it. Talk about ugly duckling.

By about mid afternoon I realised why I don't like the sun so strong, as I developed a blinding headache that I could feel was turning into a migraine. I hot footed it back to the hotel where I had left my tablets (Iwill learn one day to take them with me). Back at the hotel it was tablet time and an hours sleep, waking to feel much better, this was one I certainly caught in time.

A bit later one I felt that I could manage a little tea, so I walked over the Rhine and back into Germany, where I found a nice little place right on the bank of this mighty river, where I ate and watched the world go by, very pleasant indeed.

Tomorrow I have a ride of just over 300 miles to Ghent, so a long day in the saddle, with the temperature expected to hit 31 degrees in Strasbourg tomorrow, the timing is about right.