We Are Now Provisionally Legal (and a continuation of yesterday's walk)

I'm going to go a little out of order today because we did something very exciting...we went to get our Cartes de Séjour (basically, our green card to be able to stay in the country legally for the year) at the Prefecture. After a little waiting, we got our provisional cards! Woohoo! Apparently, now I have to get a check up at the doctor's, and then we can get our permanent cards. This is exciting because, as many of you know, the process has been going on since January.

So, in commemoration of the great event, we took a picture of the lovely building we had to visit this morning to start the end of the process:

It was across from a lovely park that had a nice view of the cathedral:

Also, very near, was an archway (built not too long ago, but in the Roman style) to remind the city of its Roman roots. On it is inscribed the Roman name for the city, Argentoratum. We promised Sophie that she could go look at it if she was a very good girl at the Prefecture. As you can tell, she enjoyed her treat.

So, back to our walk yesterday. After the Place Kléber, we walked over to the train station, as we had been promising Sophie that she could see some real trains since we arrived. It's a very interesting (and clean!) station. A new facade (the modern glass that you see in the picture) covers the old facade (a typical European train station look) almost like a modern covered porch or something.



Right as we arrived to the tracks, a TGV left for Paris, so Sophie got to see a train leave. She certainly enjoyed her time there!

As we walked back, we decided to see if we could find a park nearby so that we would know where to take Sophie throughout the year. It turns out that there's a park about 10 minutes away in the wonderful little area called Petite France.

The towers below were originally attached to some covered bridges, one of which still exists, and herald the entrance into Petite France. I liked this picture because of the very contemporary building that lands right between them.

A view of Petite France: **I definitely will be taking more pictures of this area, but it was very gray yesterday, so I didn't want to take too many pictures. I'll post more when we have a clear day.

And finally, Sophie enjoying herself at the park: