European Mountains and Rivers Day 16 – Strasbourg

We arrived this morning in the German town of Kehl where we caught a bus for a short trip over a bridge and into the Alsace region of France and the town of Strasbourg. There cannot be many places in the world where you can catch a tram from one country to another  but you can here.

Our guide told us that her grandmother’s nationality had changed four times during her lifetime and she had never moved house. Of her two sons, one had wound up fighting on the German side in WW2, the other for the French. It is perhaps appropriate then that this city was chosen to house the EU parliament and courts.

The road into the city was lined with plane trees, each supporting a stork’s nest, most with a stork in residence.

it is an incredibly beautiful city, crisscrossed with running rivers and streams.

Most places you will find the odd occasional cute medieval lane. Here they were everywhere. Every corner you turned was another amazing vista.

The Church was an impressive medieval construction with stained glass dating from the 13th  Century.

Here we are having a coffee as the world streams past.