Our cycling adventure with Sarah and Therin starts with the annoying necessity of sitting sardined among 400+ strangers, breathing stale, recycled air, eating plastic dipped ‘food’ and managing the head-bobbing, mouth drooling event that suffices as ‘sleep’ on a long-haul.

Yes, it is worth it as we arrive in Frankfurt, easily exit German customs, ask directions each time we turn a corner and soon find ourselves on a train to Strasbourg. Head fog permeates our decisions but with four brains we are able to reach our destination including navigating two rail transfers along the route.

The Ibis Styles Hotel is a mere three blocks from the central station in Strasbourg and the receptionist gives the impression she is waiting strictly for us and has nothing more important than our happy experience. Thumbs-up so far. We all go to our rooms and gather later in the lobby for our first outing.

Very cool LED light in the lobby.

Strasbourg has a delightfully attractive town center with the wonderful advantage a canal gives to the ambiance of a city. Human scale buildings with attractive details add so much eye-candy to our walk.

The under-belly of the canal was evident as we walked along the foot path skirting the water. Dead bicycles and thriving bee hives helped to counter the visual reality of all the dog doodoo scattered along the path. (I spared a photo of that).

As we explored the streets, hunger and jet lag were duking it out in our heads with hunger prevailing and thus propelling us to find a spot serving food at 5:00 pm.

Many blocks of wandering brought us to a lovely restaurant on the canal where we energized with pizza, wine, beer and coffee.

This refueling enabled sustained wandering among the streets of “Petite France” on our way back to the Ibis Hotel for the real battle over jet lag.