Two August Days on Strasbourg's Canals
The train over had one of those facing-table compartments, all four of us around it, which turned the ride into cards-and-iPad territory before we'd even left the platform.
Strasbourg in the evening meant walking the canals. The girls goofed around in the park near the old palace buildings, photobombing each other in turns, and then we followed the River Ill as it split and rejoined around the city. Two swans came down the middle of the water near the covered market barges, close enough that we stopped and watched them go past.
The Ponts Couverts were the thing I wanted to see — three bridges and four towers put up as a defensive work in the 13th century, over the branches of the Ill in the Petite France quarter. There were originally five towers, and the wooden covers that gave the bridges their name are long gone, but nobody bothered to rename them. The towers have been a Monument historique since 1928.
We crossed back over a bridge hung with petunias, the Palais Rohan on one side and the cathedral spire sticking up behind it. One padlock clipped to the railing where we stood.
