Friday September 17th
After resting for a couple of days Mary asked who wanted to come out today. It had been wet and it is such a crush in the backpacks with the umbrellas and jackets and lunches that we had been staying home and keeping Hemi company.
But today it was really sunny so BerLin wanted to see a city in France especially one that used to be part of Germany. She also said they were going on a boat trip so we thought that would be fun.
The night before they bought 24 hour travel tickets. It seems they got the tickets all wrong herein Strasbourg. Yesterday when they had gone to the machine to buy the tickets for the next day they couldn’t find the option for the one they had that day. They thought they had bought a day ticket for Thursday and that is what they had used. The tickets system relies on you buying tickets in advance and then validating them on your first trip. You have to carry your validated ticket with you in case you are asked to show it. They probably would have been in trouble with the ones they had for Thursday as they were considerably cheaper. Anyway they were sure they had the correct ones for today and validated them as soon as they got onto the bus. A group of young people were questioned by the bus driver when they got on at the Youth Hostel bus stop and they produced 24 hour tickets left over from the night before. Most of the locals seem to have prepay Oyster type cards that they swipe as they get on the buses or trams.
Once in town they walked to where the boats left from, through some streets they had not previously been along. There are lots of lovely small streets with interesting little shops in Strasbourg. They got the 11.15 boat trip. There are 8 languages available on the headphones and the commentary was very good. By now, having done the audio guide walk, they knew their way around quite well and recognised where they were. The trip is at a very slow pace and allows you to see things really well. There are two locks to go through, one to raise you up a level and one to lower further along. The trip took them right up to the European Institutions. Strasbourg houses the European Parliament. It was chosen as the venue because of its history of political unrest and its ability to adapt in times of change. There are huge glass and steel buildings all set on the edge of the river and they look very dramatic when the sun is on them. The round trip took an hour and a quarter. 
After eating lunch in a pretty square they found a tram and went back out to the European District to take photos and visit the Orangie Gardens. This involved a change of tram onto the E line which had obviously been built to service this district. The gardens were all being set up for some event that is going to take place at the weekend. There were tents going up everywhere and high ropes being put up into the trees for abseiling. There were also some guys doing chainsaw sculptures and making quite a good job of them too.
The Orangie was originally built for Empress Josephine when she and Napoleon resided in Strasbourg, but apparently she never visited it. The formal gardens around it are the usual beautiful French gardens with lots of height and a great mixture of colours. They are very fond of mixing hot and cool colours in their gardens and it looks great. It was so pleasant to have a warm sunny day and for them to be able to walk around outside without several layers of clothing on. There was a little zoo as well, which was mainly birds, but there was a cage of cheeky monkeys up to their usual tricks. There were no kiwis and no bears. 
They walked back along the river to get another photo of one of the European buildings and then caught the tram back to town. There they had a browse around the shops and found the patisserie that had some delectable raspberry tarts and bought a couple of these for dessert. So this was the last the day of being tourists because tomorrow and Sunday will both be travelling days to get them back up through France to catch the ferry back to Dover.
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