(Hopefully) A Whole Buncha Pictures

dear erik,

how's life?  we're here for our last night in strasbourg.  we've been having some trouble with our plan of an overnight train from paris to florence - namely, they no longer run the overnight train from paris to florence.  now you stop in milan at 3:30 in the morning and switch trains, and they charge you about 300 dollars.

so - we're thinking we're gonna do something else.  now the plan is that we'll leave paris (near frickin' dawn) and take the high speed train to nice, where we got a dull but cheap and hopefully clean hotel room near the train station.  we'll stay there and then move on to florence the next day.  we won't know until tomorrow if we can get the train tickets - so think happy thoughts...

right.  things here have been good.  went to see the cathedral, which is really spectacular; went to a concert last night, which was fun; paid 2 euros each to watch the astronomical clock strike noon, which was pretty much the least climactic thing we've done so far, and also a lot of walking around looking at things. 

i'll post any exciting details i can think of, but i thought i'd put up some pictures since so far it's been taking significantly more to crash the internet here than in the last few spots.  here's hoping...

these are some shots from paris.

thought this was pretty great.  at first i thought it was just a trick of the light, but it really is just the ivy.

one of the graves at montparnasse cemetery.  here's some more from there:

don't even know what the hell this is - i didn't see a name on it anywhere, but thought it was fascinating (albeit not terribly reassuring for a cemetery).

this made me think of karen morrison.  remember that book she brought with all the beautiful little hearts in it?

this is strasbourg.  this is the section called petite france, where it's all these super-old buildings (maybe tudor?  i feel like there's too much criss-crossing to be tudor, but maybe i'm just making that up?) with narrow little cobblestone streets. 

it's charming, but both megan and i found it a bit Too Adorable.  like something at disneyworld.  the fact that they're all original buildings makes it better, but it's still a bit too much.  however, strasbourg is a huge area, and we're only dealing with the tiny tourist section, so i imagine the rest of it looks less like this and more like ohio or something.

this is the main cathedral (notre dame - our lady sure does get around!) which is really wonderful.  i realize that i've kind of run up against the dearth of superlatives in my vocabulary, and we're only a few entries into this blog.  sigh.

one of the rose windows.  this doesn't really capture it, so here's a detail that helps a bit.  i just love stained glass!  i'm thinking of having a house built out of it, and i'm just gonna sit in there all day and think about throwing stones.  (and then, not.)

 

all right - i gotta sign off and do some stuff before i go to sleep.  here's one more:

 

that castle-looking building is the international high school.  yup - that's how they do things here in strasbourg.

 

(wondering why all my text is suddenly centered.  such an adventure, this blogging.)