15/7 - From the Tyrol to Alsace

According to the trusty GPS, today's leg of the journey shouldn't have been more than about 4 - 5 hours.  Right.  We were up and off pretty early (for us) because it was just too cold and wet to hang around, and after the briefest of looks round Innsbruck,  plotted the coordinates for Uncle Spiro's house in Strasbourg.

Don't forget, we're armed with our vignette, so we can drive on any road we want in Austria, and there are no tolls in Germany, so it'll be motorway driving all the way.  Yet it still took us hours and hours to get there.  Why?  One of the mysteries of life.  Whenever I looked at the GPS,there were always still four hours to go. Ok so we met traffic going into the Leermooser (sp?) Tunnel, which set us back about an hour, and a bit more traffic around the big cities, but still. We finally drove into Strasbourg, the heart of Europe, at six thirty in the evening.

Strasbourg is beautiful.  I mean, I love Alsace anyway, but Strasbourg is something else.  It has finesse, elegance, that je ne sais quoi that you breathe in as you walk down its wide tree-lined streets.  It's multi-cultural, polyglot and just charming.  Flat fronted buildings wear tiny flower filled balconies with intricate wrought iron railings,there's a river, the European parliament, Germany (Kehl) is a short bike ride away over the bridge (there are people on bikes everywhere), and there's a full programme of events every evening.

Tonight we watched the 'Jeux d'eau et lumieres' on the river.  A bit tacky, I thought, but much impressive all the same - water spirting about all over the place in time to music from different eras, and lights and lasers and images of dancers projected onto the surrounding buildings.  They do something similar on the cathedral facade (without the water, obviously, but with lights and music) which I saw three years ago (and found tasteless), and this year apparently they're doing the same, but with a live philharmonic orchestra.  I'll keep you informed.