Strasbourg, France

We went to Strasbourg, France a few days ago. It was beautiful there! They did the BEST pretzels. The apartment buildings are quite a site. I LOVE the timber buildings. We went with our friends, the Shumways. They have 4 young boys who Jakob and Zack love to play with.
This city sits on a river and below is a picture of a lock system. I think those things are so fascinating. The streets are very narrow. The last couple of pictures are of the Cathedral that Strasbourg is famous for. It has a very large clock and astronomy system inside it. The building is AWESOME! I can't imagine the work that went into building it. It was very large and surrounded by tons of buildings, so getting a good picture with my tiny camera was a little difficult. Below is the best I could get.
One of my favorite experiences there was the pick-pocketers. We had been warned about them in a book that we read on the way there. However, we didn't think we would actually see them. At one point we saw a group of 4 older teenagers just standing around looking at people. Then they walked a little ways and pretended to be looking at the cathedral. Then they separated and walked among the poeople. (Ashely and I were fascinated with them so we watched them for quite some time.) At one point they walked up to Spencer Shumway. It was obvious they were trying to get into his pocket. We just laughed when they were unsuccessful. At another point we saw another group of kids sitting in a doorway with a bunch of wallets. They were going through them,talking, pointing at ID's (probably driver's licences) and laughing.
Close to the cathedral were also beggars. That made me sad! This one woman must have been following me around because she kept coming up to me, speaking in French and sounding desperate. I really didn't have anything that I could give her. I watched her quite a bit too. She would size people up and down and then go up to certain people. If she was unsuccessful two or three times she would wrap her hair in a scarf and find others. If that didn't work she took her hair down. She also had a very young toddler who she would change her look too. She went back and forth with this changing several times. At one point she sat down at the door of the Cathedral. When we came out there was a different woman and child sitting on the step, covered in blankets looking very lonely and needy. I felt bad for that little child that had to sit there for who knows how long and act the way he or she was acting.