Last night we walked to the train station to pick up our rental car to use today. We planned to explore the surrounding area and use our Pass’Alsace today. Problem was I didn’t look closely at the dates and I had accidentally booked it for pick up tonight, not last night. So today we had a lazy day in Strasbourg. The boys and I went to see the astronomical clock at Notre Dame de Strasbourg.

The rose window

This clock shows the position of the planets, the position of the sun and the moon in relation to the earth, and more. At astronomical noon, the rooster (top left) crows and the figures move.

The clock on top has two sets of hands. The silver set shows the time observed in this time zone. The gold set shows the time according to the sun. In this case there is about a 30 minute difference. The bottom clock shows the time on a 24 hour clock and also shows sunrise and sunset.

My mom took Nova, Esme and Asa on The Little Train which took them on a tour of Strasbourg.

While they did that, Cal and I went to my favorite little shop, Les 3 Ptis Cochons (the 3 little pigs) where we ordered a soft pretzel with cheese and bacon each. Sooo gooood. They were still warm. I’m going to miss those when we leave Strasbourg!

Then we dropped the boys off at the Airbnb and my mom and I took a long walk with the girls looking for shops. Unfortunately, it was lunch time and many of the shops were closed. Lots of shops are closed all day on Monday too. We did find a little inexpensive clothing shop and the girls each got a couple of new shirts. We also stopped at McDonald’s for a treat. Nova got macarons and Esme got a donut. I got a little rum sponge cake called a canelé.

After dinner, we took the tram towards the German border (Kehl) again. We went to Deux-Rives Garden and crossed the pedestrian bridge to Germany. We had an appointment to pick up a rental car so we crossed back and took the tram home.

Asa has been collecting rock or soil samples from places we visit.