One of our first stops was the E.U. Parliament, which is a little bit outside of the central city but on the tramline. It's this enormous, modern, glass structure shaped in a hollow oval, and it has all the flags outside.
I don't know if this is THE Parliament - as there are other places in Europe where the E.U. will meet - or even if THE Parliament exists, but whatever they do there leads the Strasbourgians to believe they inhabit the "capital of Europe".
Only groups who call ahead can get tours of the building, so we could only walk around the inside courtyard. Security watched everyone carefully to make sure no one slipped in the many doors lining the circle.
Next we headed to la Petite France, a remnant of the medieval city that is still done up in an authentic way. It has tons of those old-looking houses and sits right on the river:
We didn't actually do much there but walk around, but it was so interesting! Tons of the buildings showed dates from 1400-1600, like this sauerkraut restaurant
After that we ate lunch then visited the cathedral. It is the tallest Gothic structure in the world, and for a while was the tallest building in the world. Inside there is a huge astronomical clock with little guys that come out and ding on glockenspiels every 15 minutes. I couldn't get a picture of it because it was so dark in there, unfortunately. The whole thing, unusually, is made of sandstone, so it does not have the same cold, grey look as most Gothic cathedrals. I only have good pictures of the outside, like I said, but if you're interested Wikipedia has some good pics of the inside.
I climbed to the top (well, as close as they let you) of one of the towers and got some great views of the city, one of which is in the last Strasbourg entry. There was a little museum on the bells and the construction of the towers, but most interesting were the names carved into the side of the towers:
I don't know how well you can see that, but the names were carved by tourists who have visited the cathedral throughout the centuries. It was just as much a tourist attraction as it is today starting in the early 1700's, as you can see by the carvings. One even had a little Star of David by the name.
I then went to the Museum of Decorative Arts, one of three museums housed in the Palais Rohan, where the archbishops of the Alsace region lived. It is a gorgeous Renaissance building, and the museums all seem really interesting, though I did not have time to visit the other two. The one I did visit focused, unsurprisingly, on how the rich of Alsace decorated their homes. There were some cool exhibits that I couldn't take pictures of, but I was able to get some of the porcelain. Aside from that, there were rooms done up as they would have been centuries ago, some turn-of-the-century toys, things like that.
So it was a really good trip and probably more interesting than I had thought it would be!
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