Last day of our trip

Friday was the last day of our trip. Ben only had to work until noon, so we decided to take a drive into France. The town of Strausbourg was only about 2 hours away just across the border between Germany and France. The drive was absolutely beautiful! We took the autobahn down the German border. The roads were lined on both sides with thick woods. All the trees were red, yellow, orange and green. Once we got to France, we parked in a parking garage so we could go out and sightsee. The garage was nuts! The ramp in the lot was only big enough for one car at a time, and each level only had 5 or 6 spaces to park. Each space seemed to face a different direction! Crazy!

We headed out into the town center to find the Cathedral. For hundreds of years, it was the tallest cathedral in the world, and is currently the 4th tallest in the world. When we walked through the streets of Strausbourg, we came to an open plaza with a beautiful two level carousel. There were people setting up tents for a wine and cheese tasting. We kept walking and as we came around the corner, the Cathedral immediately appeared, towering above us. I have to say it was an incredible structure. Every square inch was covered with statues, carvings, and ornate stained glass windows. The building was amazing to tour.

After the Cathedral, I spent almost 4 hours going through all the tourist shops in the town square. It was fun for me, and poor Ben just sat in the chairs in front of the Cafe's . It started to get dark, so we chose a place to eat. There were very few places with menus in English, so we decided to play it safe and try an Italian place. The menu was written in French and German, so picking out food was kind of tough. I knew "fromage" meant cheese, so I picked a 3 cheese pasta. When my food came out, it looked great, but smelled kind of weird. I took a bite and almost gagged! The pasta tasted like a chunk of mold! The 3 cheeses in the sauce were definately nothing I had ever tried before. They sure like stinky cheese in Europe! I couldn't take another bite. I just ate the crust from Ben's pizza.

When leaving the city, we passed a gourmet cookie parlour. We walked inside and the sales lady offered us a sample. The cookie was so good, we decided to get some. All the types were out in big barrels that you could hand pick and put in a bag, or decorative tin. I though the tin was pretty, so we picked one and began to fill it to the top with cookies. We took it up to the register to pay, and the clerk told us the total was 24 euros (about 38 dollars) We just died! We couldn't return the cookies, since we had already touched them. So we said, oh well, and got them anyway. Even though they cost a fortune, it was still fun to have a sweet reminder of our time in France.

It was getting dark, so we decided to head back to Germany. As we were driving along, we had a hard time figuring out if we had crossed the border or not. While we were speculating, we suddenly heard a "fhoom, fhoom" sound with two quick bursts of light. We looked at each other for a minute wondering what just happened. I soon realized that we had just gotten a speeding ticket from an automatic speed detector! I thought this was pretty funny, and kept laughing at what our picture must look like on the ticket.

After driving for an hour, we saw that our tank was almost empty. We drove to one stop, only to find out it was already closed. We turned around to find another station, and got really nervous that we wouldn't find any gas. The needle was dropping fast, and soon we were below empty. We pulled into another station just in time. While Ben was pumping gas, I headed into the station to find something to eat, since I didn't really have dinner. I saw a package with a picture of a marble swirl poundcake dipped in chocolate. We got the cake and some treats and I headed to the car. I opened the package, expecting to find slices of cake. I was wrong. It was a solid poundcake as long and my forearm and as thick as a brick. I was so hungry that I just bit into it. I must have looked pretty funny sitting in a car, biting chunks of cake!

We got back to Germany and started packing our bags. The next day we got up early to get to the airport two hours early. We spent 9 hours on the flight from Germany to Cincinatti, then another 4 hours to get to Salt Lake. We then had to drive back home to Logan. With the time difference, and all our travel, we had been awake for 22 hours by the time we walked into our house! We were tired, but happy to be home. I will always treasure my trip to Europe, it was the best!!