Lonely Tourist

Apart from grabbing some McDonald’s for dinner, I didn’t bother to go out yesterday so today was effectively my first day as a solo traveller. So far my conclusion is: I prefer not to be alone! Everyone needs their space now and then, but when travelling, I prefer to have someone with me! The only thing I enjoy more when Paul isn’t around is shopping, but I can’t really fit stuff into my backpack or use it for the next year or two, so I’m not really inclined to do much shopping!

Before heading out, I waited for the cleaning staff to come around so I could tell them it wasn’t necessary to clean my room – I’ve decided to use the spare bed as a storage space for my stuff since the floor is heinous and I didn’t want them to move everything to make up the bed. I finally headed out at two and started by going to Place Kléber, Strasbourg’s most central square, to find an Orange store (a major cell phone carrier in France). We had picked up a SIM card for our cell back in Montpellier, but it got used up on roaming charges in Switzerland so I needed a refill to receive calls (interestingly enough, you don’t get charged minutes for incoming calls while in France because the person dialing gets charged so this SIM has allowed us to receive calls from North America without crazy roaming charges).

The Orange store by Place Kléber was insanely busy and, by the time I got my refill, it was past three o’clock and most restaurants were closing as I searched for somewhere to eat lunch! I finally wandered to the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg, a major tourist attraction, and stopped for lunch at a nearby restaurant. This turned out to be a terrible choice – I ordered the steak special and it can only be described as a chewy, flavourless slab of meat served with greasy fries. Tomorrow I’ll definately have to get going earlier so I can find a decent restaurant before they close for the afternoon !

After lunch, I took my time checking out the Cathédrale, which is pretty impressive, then walked along the Ill River which runs around the old town center. By six o’clock I was completely bored of reading the map and walking around by myself, so I picked up some groceries and take-out and head back to the hotel. It was nice to not have Paul rushing me as I perused the aisles in the grocery store, but aside from that, everything today would have been better with him ! Thank god this is only for a few days…