Strasbourg

Strasbourg is a strange place. Its such a mix of French and German. If you went up to someone there's as much chance of them being German as there is French. Even the road names are in both languages.

Today I got up and checked out of the hotel,  leaving my bag. I then walked down to the Ponts Couverts, which are actually decouverts now and through to Petite France which is an area of Strasbourg in which most of the houses date from the 16th and 17th centuries. I watched as a batorama boat and about twenty canoes and kayaks with kids in went through the lock in different directions. It was chaos.

Then I tried to find the batorama start point. Tried being the key word. Twice I got lost, despite the fact I knew exactly where it was. I got confused by the fact Strasbourg has like two arms of the river and walked in completely the wrong direction,  ended up in completely the wrong part of town and had no idea where I was. It took me about 15 minutes to find where I was on the map. The second time was more like taking the scenic route rather than the direct route, rather than getting completely lost.

For lunch, after my boat tour, I am going to try a Flambee which is apparently the thing round here, although it just looks like a pizza to me.

The boat tour was nice. It was really hot and the guy doing the english commentary had an irish accent which is always a plus. We saw the European Parliament building as well as some of the other things already mentioned.

I went to 'Flams' restaurant for my flambee. It was delicious. Really fast service too. I had lardons and onion on mine.

I was aiming for the 3:43 train to Paris and I got to the station around 20 past, only to discover all the interail places on all the Paris trains had already gone. I had to pay €18. I'm not really sure in this context if that's expensive or not. I had to pay €10 just for the reservation in Italy and I don't know how much I would have had to pay if there were spaces or if I didn't have a pass. But its still more than I would have liked. When I get to Paris I'm going to book my next trip so I don't have the same problem.

Je suis arrivé dans Paris. Or something along those lines.