I think the first thing they teach people when they go to work for the airlines or trains or bus service is the phrase, "Sorry for the unavoidable delay. We hope you weren't inconvenienced." And it doesn't matter what language they are saying it; you just know what they mean. I think it's that insincere tone of voice (aka. "just suck it up"). Anyway, we only had 14 minutes to make our train connection in Lyon, and when we were still on the train 20 minutes past our arrival time, everyone started tackling the conductor wondering what they were supposed to do. He said something to all the french speakers, which seemed to relax them. One of them was also going to Strasbourg, and she knew just enough English to say, "follow me," so we decided we didn't have anything to lose. Turns out, our train was hooking up with the "connecting" train (they frequently do that here - hook trains together, or split them apart and send them off to different destinations), so all we ended up doing was moving our suitcases from Car 2 down to Car 13.
We finally made it to Strasbourg, which is in the eastern part of France (almost to the German border). It's a very different form of architecture and food once again. This canal runs right outside our hotel; it's very pretty.
We went out for dinner to a traditional Alsatian restaurant (I think "Alsatian" means "German"). I had chicken and spatzel with a white mushroom sauce (it was tremendous). Bruce had some kind of croquette with chicken and cheese (extremely rich). Of course, we had to have dessert, but we should have shared one. They were HUGE - black forest cake and chocolate ice cream with tart cherries and kirsch. We're going to have to do a lot of walking tomorrow.
