In the morning of December 14th, after not enough sleep because of the Lucia party at my place the night before, Anne-Line, Hans, John and Pete arrived for a second road trip. This time to Freiburg and to Strassbourg where French Anne-Line, who had joined the group from Neuschwanstein, proved a very good addition.

After a two and a half hour drive we arrived in Freiburg and we left the parking house in the center of the city exactly at noon. The main goal was to find somewhere to eat, not for the first time this place showed to be McDonalds. As on the last road trip the weather wasn't very good, it was rather cold and again, foggy. Anyway, we visited the Christmas market in the city centre of Freiburg, the city with the most hours of sun in Germany (can't approve that though...). Very famous is the 116 metre tall gothic cathedral, building started as early as around year 1200 and was not finished until 300 years later, the bell from 1258 is still rung every Friday. Beside the cathedral we also for example found a street called Erasmusstrasse and a playground where we had a lot of fun! Unfortunately the cable car to the 1284 meter high mountain just kilometres from the city centre was closed, due to season or to weather I don't really know.

After Freiburg we set off for eastern French metropolis Strassbourg. Exiting Freiburg in the wrong direction we got to see quite some of the French and German countryside, but even more fog. Being a huge tourist magnet for people from both Germany and France and at Christmas times there were long car queues around and in the city of Strassbourg. After endless waiting we were very lucky to find a parking place in a central back street. We then briefly met up with Raph and a couple of friends of his in front of the magnificent catherdral before we took a tour of the city on our own. In the Saturday evening the city was totally full of people and beautifully lit up for the approaching Christmas. It is also a very expensive city we realised and the food in the, not that fancy restaurant, we visited, wasn't really worth the money. Before we left for our last goal of the day, the European Parliament, we really enjoyed the beauty of the city on our walk back to the car. We arrived at the parliament at nine in the evening and in the dark there was not that much to see. However, we took some photos and we can now tell that we have been there.

On the way back to Stuttgart we now directly chose the right way and some time before midnight we arrived in Neckartor. The people in the back seat actually fell asleep as I safetly drove the car home (although Hans was wide awake in the front seat... ;-).