Falling pretty far behind, and trying to slowly get caught up on these posts. The net makes it very difficult!

Today (12/3/2019 – although typed on 12/5/2019) we found ourselves in the harbor of the beautiful Alsacian (a region of France) city of Strasbourg, in France! Along Germany’s southern border the Rhine is the border between France and Germany. We took a very long bus ride, (even though the city is right there – traffic was bad!) to the edge of Strasbourg old town and center which is a really pretty medieval style town. Though on the way, we drove by the cool European Community headquarters, a mainly economic organization of many European countries, completely separate and unrelated to the EU. Strasbourg downtown has many modern and new structures in some areas, and very old half-timbered in other areas. There is also a massive cathedral! The third tallest in Europe after Cologne and Ulm. As well there were many Christmas Markets all over the place, and we didn’t have a whole lot of time, especially if we wanted to visit the second city this day! We walked around for a bit and then took our bus back to the ship for a little bit.

Later on in the evening we boarded the bus for another small town I visited four years ago – Gengenbach, deep in the Black Forest. It is another neat old medieval style town, and this one has the world’s largest advent calendar! The town hall has 24 windows, and each night a new image is revealed and illuminated in a window after a play performed by local children doing parts of The Little Prince. Each year a different theme is chosen to display in the windows, this year art was chosen reflecting the theme of French author Antoine De Saint-Exupéry children’s book “The Little Prince”. Last year it was the theme of Andy Warhol. Glad we missed that one!

Images of Strasbourg and Gengenbach!