Here's a quick background check for you: Strasbourg is located on the French-German border in the Alsace region. Throughout history, claims on who owned the area were violently disputed. Many of the original buildings were destroyed, several times, during many different wars, most notably during the Allied raids in WWII when Alsace was annexed by the German Reich. After WWII, Strasbourg was liberated by the 2nd French Armored Division. Today, Strasbourg is one of the seats of the European Union's Parliament. Strasbourg is obviously very much influenced by its close proximity and historical ties to Germany. It is supposed to have the best marches de Noel in all of the Alsace region (we shall see how it compares to Colmar!).
We started our day with our McDo breakfast down the street, checking our email, and leaving our baggage in the storage closet behind the front desk. The front desk lady allowed us to eat our take-out breakfast in the breakfast room, which was nice of her to do... since we didn't pay the 7 extra euros per person for breakfast (from what we saw, we were glad to have spent just 3 euros at McDonald's).
After we got all bundled up (big sweaters, coats, scarves, tights under our pants, thick socks, and gloves!), we headed towards the markets by the Cathedral . We stopped at the square with the Christmas tree and a nice couple took our picture (and then we took theirs). There were a few stalls around this area, and since they were the first ones I saw... I got a little Christmas market happy and bought a jar of pumpkin spice jam from some nice old ladies. It was a weird first purchase, but after having had it for a few days now, I have thoroughly enjoyed my touch of pumpkin in my otherwise non-pumpkin flavored diet.
The markets by the Cathedral were by far the best, and where we did the bulk of our shopping/drinking of the famous vin chaud (hot wine, pronounced vahn show). It is kind of like a hot sangria with oranges and cinnamon added to the red, or sometimes white wine. It was a perfect remedy for cold hands... but we also tried hot orange juice... which kind of sounds gross, but was actually quite delicious. I think I might have even preferred it to the vin chaud! We each found Christmas presents for just about everyone we know (almost)... there was everything from jewelry to wooden objects to scarves, ornaments, and vin chaud spices! We happened to still be around these markets at noon when the big church bells went off, which was definitely a cool thing to experience. We noticed though that the markets were getting more and more crowded. We passed by the ice skating rink, but didn't stick around long because there were so many people in that area.
About this time, we both started to get very very cold. We wanted to eat pretzels and gingerbread for lunch, but the warmth of a nice restaurant was inviting. We found a really nice place, bustling with market goers. I wanted to try the Alsace specialty choucroute (sauerkraut), only God knows why. It came out with heaps of cabbage, topped with several different kinds of meat. The picture from the other post speaks a thousand words. Needless to say, the elderly women sitting next to us, who both ordered the choucroute, were none-to-impressed with how much of it I actually managed to eat (they practically licked their plates). The couple on the other side of us sort of laughed and said something about tourists always wanting to try sauerkraut, but never really liking it. On the upside, I did manage to pick a delicious chocolate cake desert, with a warm fudgy filling and raspberry sauce drizzled around the side. Amy went with a safer menu option, some sort of honey glazed meat and pasta and a fruit tarte for desert.
After lunch, we walked towards la Petite France, which is the area of town we hadn't seen yet. We were so glad we walked through it because it was incredibly cute, with rows of wood-framed houses and flower boxes. We did a little more shopping and headed towards the markets by the train station. We got our last vin chaud for the day, a pretzel for the train ride, and headed back to the hotel to warm up and pick up our luggage. It was a very successful shopping day, but more importantly it was a lot of fun to walk around with no real schedule in mind and shop and see what we could see!
We had a long train ride back and it snowed the entire way until we got to Lyon. It was a good thing we got cookies to go with our pretzels:)
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