Strasbourg, France

I know I have barely touched this thing all summer, and I'll go back and make a few posts about summer happenings just for my own memory, but right now I figured I would go ahead and post about being in Germany! I still can't believe I got the opportunity to come all of the way to Europe. Not really something I had planned on doing this young, but I'm definitely not complaining.

Thursday night I flew out of Dulles International Airport and landed in Germany around one in the afternoon on Friday. After I found the Shields in the airport, we looked for about an hour to find the car. The Frankfurt Airport is definitely a tad bit confusing, especially for someone who is as horrible with directions as I am :)

Saturday morning we went to Strasbourg, France. So in the course of a few days, I have now been to four countries: USA, London (just the airport, but we'll count it), Germany, and France. I'm pretty pleased with that list, and hopefully it will grow throughout my life. Anyways, we drove about two hours to Strasbourg, and the drive alone was beautiful. Frankfurt, where the Shield's live, is a big city and they are really close to downtown. During the drive, I started to see more of the green, rolling hills, which I loved.

Some of the scenery from the car window driving along the highway. We passed a few fields where you could see groups of farmers and workers. Also, it was exciting to start and see road signs for Strasbourg and other areas of France. We also passed an Ikea--apparently they started somewhere over here in Europe. They are everywhere.

When we got to Strasbourg, we parked the car and started walking around. For a city, it was extremely clean and it was so pretty.

There were tons of little houses and buildings like these lining the river and streets everywhere.

One of the bridges crossing over the river. Flowers are a big thing over here, and so you see flowers everywhere, especially lining the sidewalks and hanging on people's window sills. It makes everything look so pretty.

Aubrey in front of a miniature door. I guess people were a tad bit shorter way back when :)

Just a view of some of the buildings in Strasbourg.

For lunch we decided to grab some pizza in one of the many restaurants. We walked in and the owners and workers didn't speak one ounce of English. We managed to sit down and point to pictures well enough to order a cheese pizza, an everything pizza, and a Hawaiian pizza for everyone to share. When we tried to ask for extra plates, however, we got nowhere, so everyone just gathered around and ate off of the serving plates. And we got about 2 paper towels for 7 people as napkins :) It must be frustrating not being able to communicate very well with people on a regular basis. The pizza was really good, and as we were walking out, the guy just started saying goodbye in every language he knew.

Yummy lunch!

After lunch we kept walking around and taking pictures of everything we saw. So many neat things to look at and beautiful things to try and capture.

I would love to just live in one of those little apartments above the water, with people all around and the river running below me. So pretty and calming.

Being in France, we had to take a few pictures of some French Pastries through the windows of some of the restaurants and bakeries. Yum!

A train/bus. Some sort of public transportation :)

We walked by this old and ridiculously ornate building. It was such a pretty church and the detail on it was crazy. Can't imagine how long it would take to build that.

Some of the little details around the city. A door handle, an "access forbidden" sign (in French and German), street signs, an old lamp post with a cross on it, a creepy looking dog, old Kodak film thing, and a trashcan that reminded me of a fire hydrant.

The post office

Me in France :)

I'm not really sure why I took a picture of people collecting trash and cleaning up, but I saw them a few times, and their outfits were just so bright that they deserved a picture. Keeping the city clean in style.

I guess if all else fails in the United States I can transfer my job over to Frankfurt. It's funny seeing McDonald's and Burger King all over the world, and it's funny to see all of the changes in their menus. Different from the United States.

This man had some homemade looking saxophone instrument, but when he blew in it, it didn't make any noise. So he just walked around Strasbourg with that held up to his mouth and he hummed. Whatever works.

John pulled Jocelyn and Andrew along in the wagon, and it was crazy how many people would stare at it and even take pictures of it. I suppose wagons are not very common over here in Europe, and not many people had seen them before. Not sure, but that's what it seemed like.

After we walked around, and had a little trouble finding the parking lot again, we headed on home. It was so neat to see yet another area of the world, and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to travel out here.

Andrew and Jocelyn outside of the parking garage

The parking garage was right next to an art museum, so by the entrance was this little statue. Weird, but interesting looking. So I snapped one more picture, we loaded up, and we were off. Back to Germany.