Day 27: Strasbourg
Author: Steve

I've mentioned before that our river cruise has been disrupted by the floods in southern Germany, although fortunately that weather had gone by the time we arrived and we've enjoyed blue skies. Yesterday we were supposed to visit Freiburg but that didn't happen as we were in the wrong place so they took us to Rudesheim instead. Today, we were supposed to be in Strasbourg and the cruise company decided that was too good to miss so another long bus trip was organised, over two hours in each direction.
This meant we left the boat at 8am and that meant we were awake even earlier for breakfast. I spent most of the bus trip writing yesterday's blog post.
We started our visit to Strasbourg with a walking tour of the old town. Once again, Emerald had found a gem of a local guide, Denise, an older lady with great stories and a great personality.

There was a lot to see and we took a lot of photos. It is difficult to do justice to it all in blog format but I'll mention a few highlights. There will be a lot more photos on Polarsteps.
The old town was built on an island where the river splits so there were water views everywhere.


There were a lot of old buildings dating back to the 16th century.


We finished the walking tour at the cathedral. The spire of the cathedral, which took 300 years to build from the 12th to 15th century, is 150m tall.


After lunch we took a boat trip around the old town and river.

We passed through a couple of locks and admired the buildings from the water.



The tour ended with a visit to the European Parliament. Coincidentally, today was election day throughout Europe for this institution.
Then we had another two hour bus ride back to the boat. This time we had plenty of time for a swim and a rest before the daily briefing and dinner.

It rained briefly over dinner but this just made for another fantastic sunset.

We finished the night in the lounge where the activity manager, Benny, performed a "Legends of Rock" karaoke style concert which had us singing along.
