Strasbourg

Strasbourg’s city center, the Grand Île, is a great place to stroll. Two rivers converge in the city, forming the island and giving visitors beautiful views in all directions.

La Petite France, which began as a quarantine area for French soldiers who had brought syphilis to the city, has morphed to the most picturesque (and touristy) area in the city.

A swing bridge opens regularly for boat tours (including one we took) to pass through on the way to the Barrage Vauban and the “famous covered bridges”.

Vauban was a busy man. We saw fortifications that he built in Brittany, all the way on the other side of the country. He was Louis XIV’s go-to man for military engineering in the second half of the 1600s. Here the aim was to protect against attackers from the south. They would close all the gates of the dam to flood the southern part of the city.

These bridges may be famous, but they haven’t been covered in centuries – nevertheless they still call them the covered bridges. Sounds better, I guess.

I love the red and yellow color of the sandstone on many of the old buildings, including the Notre Dame cathedral.

And what’s a visit to a European city without stained glass?

While the windows on the left were all single saints, I liked that those on the right were all scenes with lots of people – and not all of them were white.

Surprisingly, the nave was mostly painted.

The organ was suspended in air on the side, something we hadn’t seen before. But the most unusual thing was the huge clock. It showed the time, sunrise and sunset, the ecclesiastical calendar, and the zodiac…and of course also did some fancy striking on the hour.

We enjoyed both low and high French cuisine. Strasbourg is known for its flamme kueche – cheese and other goodies melted on a very thin, crispy crust. (It smelled so good, we didn’t take the photo until after eating a fair amount…)

On the other end of the spectrum was the restaurant 1741, where we savored every bit of a five-course meal. Five courses was liberally interpreted – for example, the dessert “course” was pre-dessert, dessert, then coffee and sweets. The dishes were all a surprise; all one chooses is the number of courses. So good! Pictures will never do it justice.

We really enjoyed a visit to the Alsatien museum, which showed the history of Alsace through the lens of daily life. Here are a few things that tickled my fancy.

Alsace is apparently known for the enormous bows women wore on their heads. Over a hundred years, they just got bigger and bigger. Yikes!

Under French rule before 1871 (when Germany annexed most of Alsace after the Franco-Prussian War), the French had a draft that was in some ways similar to the American draft. All 20-year-old men had to draw a number. If your number was above the number of recruits needed that year, you were free. And frequently you incorporated your lucky draft number into a wall decoration:

On the stranger side, if you were a woman having difficulty conceiving, you might leave an iron toad as a votive offering in church. Apparently toads, which lay lots of eggs, were a symbol of fecundity.

There were also reminders throughout of the turbulent French-German relationship.

Whew, this is a long post! Thanks for persevering to the end!

Something seen along the way home – an automatic pizza kiosk. It claims to provide delicious hot pizza in just three minutes. France is obviously not all haute cuisine!