PBP 2007 Fini

The central station in Strasbourg is a huge, grand building, built 125 years ago when Alsace was German. It's been a major hub between Paris, Vienna and Cologne and currently serves 55,000 passengers every day. Today the entire face of this old station is being enclosed in a giant glass atrium—like a castle in a giant glass bubble. Walking around town I discovered Le Fossé des Remparts—a canal lined with "allotment" gardens. City flat (apartment) dwellers get a parcel of land on which to garden. Some grow vegetables, some ornamentals. Most keep a shed on their allotment, sometimes fixing the shed up into a tiny weekend "cottage", though sleeping there overnight is not allowed. Many add swings and slides on which the little ones may play while the parents garden. I catch the high-speed electric train (TGV) back to Paris (two hours), take the subway back to Porte d'Orléans in quartier du Petit-Montrouge meeting back up with Gilbert and Byron in the F-1 lobby.

Tuesday, Byron sets off to visit the Louvre while Gilbert and I make the rounds of the better bike shops in Paris and plan to rent a couple of the "Velib" bikes and race around the Bois de Bologne. Many of the bike shops are closed for August, but we see some really cool stuff peeking trough the windows (e.g. Heinz Stücke's bike at Rando Cycles) and a few shops are open, Bicloune being the best of those. Renting a velolib doesn't work because American credit cards lack the required on-card Europay/MasterCard/VISA puce chip. We admire the boats from all over Europe that are docked on the Seine while walking back to meet Byron who has discovered that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays! Ma pauvre!