Day of Trains, City of Lights

We had an adventurous day on the train. No one told us before we left, but everyone in Europe, and we mean everyone, goes to Paris for Easter Weekend. We tried everything to get a train from Basel to Paris, lots of different connections, lots of transfers, almost everything was sold out. We finally managed to make the reservation we needed, and also managed to spend time in Freiburg, Germany and Strasbourg, France on our way.

Freiburg was a much larger city than we thought. They have a canal running through the city with a statue of an alligator that they call the Canalligator. All around the cathedral there was a giant market with fresh fish, meat, bread, flowers and produce.

After Freiburg we stopped in Strasbourg, France. It is just across the border from Germany, and Barack Obama visited here for a NATO meetings just last week. We met a local gentlemen who told us about all of the security and people in town for the meeting, and also that he had been to Chicago and San Francisco for work.

There is one section of Strasbourg known as La Petite France, it is the oldest part of town and looks just like Belle's village. People stared as we skipped and sang "There Must Be More Than This Provincial Life".

We took a high speed train from Strasbourg to Paris. It is more than a 6 hour car ride, but the train only took a little bit more than 2 hours. The French countryside was similar to the rural parts of Southern Germany, lots of green fields, rolling hills and small towns. We noticed that the order of train announcements changed from German-French- English, to French-German-English.

We arrived in Paris in the late afternoon and walked a good distance to our hotel. We had dinner at an outdoor Bistro then walked to see some of the sights.

Tomorrow we plan to get up early, go the the Louvre and head straight for the Mona Lisa, then we'll go to Notre Dame where there will be a Good Friday Procession which will include a relic of Jesus' Cross.

Bonne Nuit