This is Natalie writing. I’m more of a random list format on these, kinda stream-of-consciousness, in case you haven’t noticed.
Last night I finally got better sleep, even though there’s no AC. Pete slept well too. We’re getting used to sleeping with the windows open, as many people do here. AC is much rarer. Thankfully it’s not too noisy here like some other Airbnbs have been.
We’ve been thinking back on our accomplishment of last week…more miles than we’ve ever done in a week, although Iceland might have had a close contender. It was hard, but beautiful. We are proud and tired.
Here is a list of the towns we’ve stayed in (in France) so far:
Orly
Nemours
Montargis
La Charité-sur-Loire
Digoin
Beaune
Besançon
Zillisheim
Strasbourg
Okay, what did we do today?
Morning bakery visit, literally steps away from our Airbnb (and the line was already out the door when we got there at 7). SO YUMMY!! Let’s just say we are eating way more from bakeries than we ever would at home, ha.
Walked 10 minutes to church, the Strasbourg ward. Excellent messages, good people. I translated a bit for Pete in sacrament meeting, then 2nd hour someone else translated for him since we were in different classes.
Walked back to apartment for lunch.
Rode the bus into Strasbourg. Beautiful European moderately big city. (Google says its population is 484,000, making it the 9th largest metropolitan area of France.) It’s quite diverse and borders Germany. It has a tumultuous history.
We visited these places on foot today: la Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Strasbourg (not to be confused with the “real” one in Paris, although this one is amazing too), le Palais Rohan (palace that’s now museums), Barrage Vauban (big bridge and dam built in 1600s), a fun area called La Petite France, and L’Eglise de Saint Thomas (another beautiful church). Had a fun quick video call with Bryan, Brooklyn, and Olive outside the church! Then we took the bus back. It was a very hot and sunny day! We walked slowly and tried to stay in the shade when we could.
Had dinner here in the apartment and did laundry. Talked on the phone to Matt for next week! Video call with Sam and Orion! (And later quickly Josie and Kara, but the kids have all been pretty sick. Thankfully doing better now.)
Our plans for tomorrow are another rest day: rest, eat bakery breakfast, rest and relax, go back into Strasbourg via bus and visit a few more things we didn’t do today, eat a yummy vegan lunch at a vegan restaurant we found (we even made reservations!), and relax more. And celebrate my birthday! We sang happy birthday to Orion on the video call since it’s his birthday tomorrow too (and also Alicia and a few other people we love).
We will also need to un-explode here in this apartment and find all our stuff, so we can get back on the bike Tuesday morning. But it’s good to have two rest days in a row after last week.
Mileage per day so far, fyi:
(Friday 16 June ended up being mostly in the taxi, so we won’t count those miles)
Saturday 17 June = 62
Sunday 18 June = 17
Monday 19 June = 80
Tuesday 20 June = 90
Wednesday 21 June = 71
Thursday 22 June = 76
Friday 23 June = 88
Saturday 24 June = 79
Total 563 miles
