In time for Octoberfest

 Imagine, flying at 38,000 feet at over 600 mph to cover 5000+ miles in half a day!  What an amazing world!  Now we are eating dinner in a fine restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland, in the altstadt. Tomorrow, we take a train to Strasbourg, France.  We have been staying in an AirBnB which requires us to buy our breakfast makings at a local grocery, but that is just a part of immersion in the local lifestyle.  Everything here is in Deutsch, but we have some knowledge of terms, Google translate is helpful, and the Swiss people usually are helpful.

Swans on the river at Zurich promenade park

This is classic Strasbourg, beautiful half-timbered buildings on the river front.

Beautiful, but this is not the main attraction in Strasbourg.  A much larger cathedral (150+ yards tall) gets more attention.

When we arrived in Strasbourg, we dragged our suitcases from the train station (bahnhof) to our accommodation because most of the area has pedestrian-only streets (fussganger), faster on foot than by vehicle.  When we arrived at the street entrance to our apartment, our landlord had been watching from an upper story window and called out to us by name.  They had stocked our refrigerator with drinks and snacks.  Very nice people.

Dawn has been to Strasbourg previously, but this is my first time.  We are surprised at the large number of tourists; is this a French holiday?  Nevertheless, the city is very scenic with an incredible cathedral, as tall as Notre Dame.  We are again staying at an AirBnB: beautiful, spacious, perfect location, and very welcoming.  Again, one of our first stops was a natural grocery store to get breakfast supplies, including lactose free items.  French is a language we know very little, but English is becoming the international language, making things easier.  Our train trip here (switching from Swiss to French at Basel) went perfectly.

This is the main cathedral in Strasbourg, a major tourist attraction.  Our Airbnb was just one block away.

It is easy to get lost in Strasburg, the streets are laid out around a winding river and its many bridges, thus the streets also have a curving pattern.  Strasburg is a significant city and was even a more major meeting place historically.  At some times in the past, it was part of Germany, thus, there is a German influence in some of the more recent neighborhoods.  The preserved architecture, half-timbered buildings, is a significant reason to visit the city.  Our accommodation is probably 300 years old.  The ceiling is about 6 1/2 feet high, and part of the floor is about 4 inches lower that the other section.

We walked the old town and used a narrow-gauged, rubber-wheeled urban 'train" to see even more of the area.  We both got Covid, which we must have picked up in Zurich or on the train.  For me, it could easily have been confused with a cold (mainly sinus congestion), but Dawn's symptoms lingered a bit longer, so we bought self-tests at the local pharmacy which confirmed our suspicion.  Both of us had previously been fully vaccinated and Dawn had had a previous (and more serious) bout with Covid despite the precautions.  Evidently Covid has become like the common cold: a condition we will just have to learn to live with.  

Being the very end of September, we experienced some cooler and drizzly days.  There are many small wineries in villages of the area.  Due to lost time from Covid, we will have to take that tour at another visit.  Our time was up in Strasbourg and our stay in nearby Colmar was only three days.