Strasbourg is in the Alsace region (one of those ping-pong areas that was German-French-German-French...). It's currently in France, but when my great grandparents and Diana's ancestors lived there, it was Germany. The whole crew embarked on the Canal Cruise Through Petite France. It was a rainy day so we were glad for the glass-covered canal boat, but it made taking pictures challenging. Here are a few I shot:
Later we were bussed into the main part of town to have a wander, case the patisseries, and see the famous Gothic cathedral. Our guide told us it was the world's tallest building from 1647 to 1874.
The cathedral is also famous for it's astronomical clock. There was actually an original one constructed around 1354. The one we visited was the second clock, completed in 1574. There was a whole lot of politics (Catholic-Protestant-Catholic-Protestant and French-German-French-German) that I didn't completely follow, but you get the idea. The second clock stopped working in 1788 and stood still unitl 1838 when a new clock maker, Jean-Baptiste Schwilgue began to rebuild it. According to our guide, he decided as a child that he would make it work again and spent the next 30 years acquiring the knowledge and skills to do so. He trained his team for a year before they began work. The clock has a planetary calendar that shows sun and moon in their correct positions (and the moon in its correct phase). Wikipedia says that the gold hands show mean solar time and the silver hands show Central European Time. There's also a rooster that crows every day at 12:30 as the apostles move around the clock. We missed that part, but did get to see the phases of man's life (from baby to skeleton) move around.
