Weather-wise, “Boxing Day" was one of the nicer days of the week, so we ventured back into "old town" to get some walking in. We decided to get another look at the city from the heights of the New Castle (tons of stairs got us there). We took a new way down over a pebbled path and through a park where we spotted a blue heron and enjoyed the sound of chirping birds and rushing water under a footbridge. ​

Many of the places we've recently visited were planned to move us northward to spend Christmas with our Belmont friends Ariane and Stefan in the Black Forest of Germany. Their home town, Baden Baden, is just an hour or so from Strasbourg France (in fact, Stefan remarked that people from the Black Forest relate far more with the Alsace region of France than they do with Bavaria to the east). We wisely left the highway and drove along the back roads through vineyards for the last 12 km.