Strasbourg March 31st- April 2ndMar 31, 2006
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strasbourg cathedral
the astronomical clock...bad picture but amazing piece of machinery
more of the cathedral
What an amazing place! Strasbourg has quite the history having to switch nationality 5 times between the German and the French. These 2 distinct cultures have had so much influence that all the inhabitants still speak both languages eventhough they are now french. It has also caused an interesting cuisine to develope...just imagine the heavy german dishes with rich french ones! The local specialty is a thing called the tarte flam which is a thin flat bread...like pizza dough...with a sweet creamy sauce and topped with lardon and onions (we had mushrooms on ours as well as the traditional toppings). Walking around was the best. We missed out on the boat tour because all the snow in the mountains is starting to melt and the water level is too high for the boats to make it under the bridges. This wasn't too bad since it gave us more time to explore the city. We walked around most of the afternoon seeing some crazy sights. At one point I was cruising around alone while the others took a nap and this huge parade of cars (about 30) were driving around town honking horns and yelling from their car windows. It was funny since I kept running into them and they seemed to be having the best time. They were all dressed up and most of the cars were decked out with ribbons and flowers. I have no idea what it was all about but they definitely got some stares. Another typical sight in strasbourg and colmar (the city we went to after the castle on sunday) is the storks. This is where the stories about babies being brought by the stork comes from. We were told that originally the storks migrated to the area because of the abundance of frogs...but typical french men ate them all and so no more storks. The bird had become associated with the area because of a famous artist (the guy who does all the old store front metal signs) and so the government decided to bring the birds back by creating sanctuaries for them. Now even with out a frog population there are storks everywhere, and they no longer migrate but stay year round because of a constant and abundant food supply. Now if you ever get to strasbourg or that area you will know why all the shops have storks paraphernalia. As for the Chateau de Haut- Koenigsbourg that was fabulous simply because it is huge, on a mountain top surrounded by woods, and there was some sort of medieval times reenactment going on that day, which really brought the castle to life. Enjoy the pictures, we only had a short time here so we had to do it marathon style...yep we were running up stairs and all around snapping photos as we went. I would love to go back and take my time to really explore. After the chateau we went into a small town of Colmar, but before we stopped for some wine tasting. This was a bit rough for me since going down the mountain (winding forest road) made me a little sick...actually really sick I almost lost breakfast, but enough of that. Just want to say I wasn't the only one ;-) Needless to say the wine was tasty. It was the traditional Alsace regional wines we tasted all were whites and a bit too sweet for me, but all the same they were good. It was sunday so of course nothing was open but it was still beautiful to walk around and see the buildings and quaintness of the town. Our tour guide here was hilarious and we had a pretty good time just window shopping and checking out all the streets and hidden corners. I love the Alsace region and would love to go back for a nice relaxing vacation, strolling around the beautiful streets and admiring the quant village style of so many towns in this area.
