RHINE RIVER CRUISE: Fifth Post

Our ship arrived in Strasbourg, France, at 8:00 a.m. on our third day. By 8:30 we were on a Viking bus headed into the city for a long walking tour of Strasbourg.

I snapped this picture as the bus crossed a bridge.

Riding alongside the River Ill.

Note the tiny house tucked between the two large buildings.

Usually tourists can take boat rides all through the city, but we didn't see a single boat. The river was quite high due to all the flooding, so maybe boat traffic couldn't get through the locks.

We left the bus here to begin our walking tour.

The pictures above and below are of the Palais Rohan, an 18th century residence built in 1732. The Episcopal palace was once the home of bishops. Louis XV and Marie-Antoinette stayed there at one time. Now it's home to several museums, which we didn't have time to see.

A view from a bridge. Note the wisteria on the right. 

We saw lots of wisteria in France and Germany.

A lovely walking path.

A river restaurant.

The architecture continued to fascinate us.

I'm guessing there's lots of mold in these buildings. 

Repair work needs to be done.

If you enlarge the above picture, you'll see a 

woman through the window over the balcony.

Looking toward the Grande lle, the historic center 

of Strasbourg, which is an island in the River Ill.

This is a great example of medieval cities.

I liked the detail on this old half-timbered building.

Note the two interesting windows. 

I really wanted to go inside for a better look.

More half-timbered buildings.

I read on Wikipedia that an incident known as the Dancing Plague of 1518 struck residents of Strasbourg. Yes, I'm serious. Around 400 people were affected with dancing mania and danced constantly for weeks, most of them eventually dying from heart attack, stroke or exhaustion.

This cute French couple performed a little dance 

for us. Hope the Dancing Plague hasn't returned!

  

The Cathedrale de Notre Dame in Strasbourg's old town is 426 feet tall and is the highest medieval building in Europe. It is magnificent, although photos don't begin to do it justice. It deserves a blog post of its own (which I won't do), so I have posted a few pictures here.

Note the way the roads and walkways are paved in the 

pictures above and below. We saw very little plain 

old concrete walks and roads in the cities we visited.

A very patient Ron waiting for me to stop snapping pictures.

A gorgeous old half-timbered building.

The next post will be about Heidelberg, which was another one of my favorite places.