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May 5, 2013

Whew! It’s tired out!

Let’s see… we last left you on Friday. Friday was another cool, windy day. We went on a bus to Strasbourg. We drove by the European Union buildings. Strasbourg France is the location of the EU Parliament. We got off the bus in Petite France and walked through the charming streets to the Cathedral. This is a beautiful church. It took them 300 years to build this Cathedral. They started in 1176 and their astronomical clock was added in the 14^th century. We were able to see the clock and we were amazed that they had the abilities to develop a clock that knows not just the time, but the seasons, the weather and so much more, and it still works!

More random Gothic stuff on the Cathedral!

After the Cathedral we spent time walking the streets of lovely Strasbourg. We had lunch at a nice place. We were walking along and I see a big button hanging over a doorway. Sure enough, it was a fabric and notions store. That was fun! Then on our walk back to catch a ride with the shuttle bus I found an embroidery store. Diana, this one is for you! Can you imagine? Two fabric/embroidery stores in one day?

Back to the boat for a nap and then a nice dinner with new friends.

Saturday we didn't go on the Black Forest tour to the cuckoo-clock factory. We were so tired! A morning to sleep in was very nice. We then went for a walk in the city of Breisach. And we found another fabric shop! What are the chances?

Then a walk up the big hill to see the church. However, it stopped spitting and actually started raining. We were weary and stopped for a minute. I turned around and said to bc “This looks like a nice place. Let’s go in here.” What a find! It was a very cool little tapas restaurant hung over the cliff with a marvelous view of the Rhine. We had a very good glass of red wine, caprese, bread and Parma ham. Perfect lunch! This place had the most unusual art.

We went back to the boat rest a little before our afternoon tour. Promptly at 2pm we went to the reception desk to turn in our keys to get our bus ticket. The program director was a little put out with us because we hadn't heard the news! (We were having a lovely lunch in town and didn't hear the latest lecture.) We weren't going to Basal, Switzerland as the river was too high. Ok… How do we get to Basal tomorrow morning? They’ll bus us! It’s about an hour’s drive. Perfect. Actually, it’s pretty much the way this vacation has gone!

At 2:15 we got on the bus for the WWII memorial tour. I’m so glad we did this. It was amazing. We went to a small but really nice museum, then to the memorial where the guide showed us how the Germans, French and Americans fought the battle in Alsace. There were many, many casualties. The area went from French, to German, back to France, back to Germany and finally the Americans liberated the villages that we were driving through. We saw the spot where Audie Murphy held off the Germans and pushed them back into retreat. It was very emotional. We walked from the bus to the Audie Murphy memorial walking by a couple of soccer fields filled with young people playing soccer. Imagine, the Germans were within yards of Audie Murphy when he jumped up on a burning tank, turning the big guns on the Germans, pushing them back. And now, kids are happily playing soccer in the calm, beautiful fields….

We had a lovely final dinner with our new friends. We hope to see them again in future travels.

Today was a long day. We got up at 6am (!!) to get a bus to Basal, Switzerland. At the airport we rented a car, after finally passing through customs, with no checks of our luggage or passports, from France to Switzerland. Bc started driving and luckily we have Francine our GPS gal. The names of streets are hard to pronounce let alone read as this is the German area of Switzerland! We headed to Wynau and Murgenthal to see if we could find the graves of my ancestors. My great grandparents, who I knew very well, emigrated from Switzerland in the early 1900s to Galveston, later settling in Santa Barbara. We found two cemeteries but they were very “new”. Most graves held people who had died in the last 20 years or so. However, it did feel very special to walk on the streets that my great grandparents must have walked. Their last names were Pluss and Lemp.

Here's a covered bridge built in 1863. About 20 years before my great grandparents were born and probably used this bridge!

Here's a view of the scenery as we drove from Basal to Geneve.

We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant. They all speak German in that part of Switzerland. It’s hard for us to understand German. But people are very nice and help us out. We had a great cup of soup and a salad sitting at a communal table with the locals.

Back on the road to drive to Geneva. Francine said we would be at our hotel by 3:30pm. Perfect! We can write the blog, rest and enjoy the evening! We made great time and were very close to Geneva when we found our freeway had been closed due to an accident. Francine recalculated and took us to Geneva via back city roads. We followed her instructions to go over the bridge to our hotel (about a half a mile away) but the bridge was closed due to a marathon! There were many Gendarmes (police) guarding the blockades, so bc pulled up and I rolled down the window to ask one of them how to get to the Hotel Longemalle. He said “that was a red light.” I said “huh?” Yup, we had not only gone through a red light, but pulled up next to a cop and asked for help! He told us how to get back around to another bridge to get to our hotel. The traffic was horrible! We waited sometimes through 3 signals to get through an intersection. The streets are not in a grid formation. They are all X's and Y's with lots of one way streets thrown in. Then add all the confusing signals and it was overwhelming! Then Francine started getting all huffy because we wouldn't go over the bridge that was closed. Long, long story short, we drove for almost 2 hours in a 15 block radius until they finally opened the closed bridge. We went around and around. Guess what? We couldn't find our hotel because they had closed the street in front of the hotel for construction. Ok, closed freeway detour, marathon closed bridge detour and closed street construction detour. We finally called the hotel and said “Where are you?” We pulled the car over (parking is impossible!) and a guy from the hotel walked over to us. We gave him the keys, he moved the barricades, drove our car through the construction mess, unloaded our bags and then took the car somewhere to park it. For only $50.00 a day! By this time it was 5:30, we were exhausted, so that actually sounded like a good deal.

So, mom, you are right! You can’t get there from here! Here is the view of our hotel.