5-27, 28, 29, 2025 The Rest of the Story

The next two days were regular tourist days. I showed Teresa the inside of the cathedral and showed her all the little quirky things that are there…. Like the tiny bent over man that is carved into the bottom of a pillar. He appears to be holding up the cathedral with his back.

Then there’s the man riding a rooster perched on an upper ledge. What’s that about ??? 

Of course, there’s the famous “Horloge Astronomique”— the astronomical clock. We spent quite a bit of time there. Although we didn’t see the grand movement of all the figures, we got a teaser at the quarter hour. 

The inside of this Cathedral tells the history of the region in many ways—through the impressive stained-glass windows, the statues and just the general architecture. It’s a place that truly takes my breath away every time I see it.

In addition to the Cathedral, we went to l’Orangerie which is a huge park that features the palace of Josephine, the wife of Napoleon, and houses many many storks. It’s really a stork sanctuary. Although the day was dreary, we saw the beauty of the gardens and the expanse of lawns.

During the time it rained, we visited the European Parliament and learned about how the European Union operates. It was impressive. I visited it once a few decades ago so it was nice to get a refresher on the European government. (Note: The chamber where the parliament meets was under renovation. We sat in the gallery and listened /watched the European Union in "action" with headphones and a device.)

Before we left, we had dinner with Celine at a restaurant in Bischheim where Fabienne lives. It was a lovely end to a wonderful vacation.

Before going to bed, Teresa and I toasted our grand vacation one last time with a dram from Scotland, the beginning of our adventure. Salut!

We left our fabulous apartment early on the 29^th, took the tram to the train station, took the train to the airport in Paris, took the plane to Seattle and then on to Boise. Whew! 

I left Boise on Monday, returned to Spokane and started my recovery from jet lag. 

…and thus ends the 2025 adventures of MaryLou with her sister, Teresa.

5-26-2025 Selestat and the Greeters of Selestat

This day was without a doubt the highlight of my entire trip. Last year when I was in Alsace for 3 months, I discovered the Greeters of Selestat but I never had the chance to sign up…. oh, wait…. What are these Greeters you ask? It’s a form of “participatory tourism” that is found in many cities in the world. Ordinary citizens become ambassadors of sorts and they introduce their town to visitors. In this case it’s Selestat. They are not tour guides. The ambassadors have varying interests and share their deepest passions with the visitors. Here’s the website:

http://www.greeters-selestat.com/en/

I filled out the form online about a week before leaving the U.S. and said that I was interested in learning about life in Selestat at the turn of the 20^th century because my grandmother (Louise) was born there in 1904 and lived there until just after the 1^st World War in 1918. Within hours, Eric responded to my request. We texted back and forth and I gave him a lot of information about my grandmother, my Nana, including some anecdotes about her life that she had told me. Eric said that he would look in the archives to see what information he could find about her. WOW! I was ecstatic. He went above and beyond any of my expectations and ended up discovering dozens, I mean DOZENS of documents and photos related to my grandmother’s life. Census documents, travel documents, citizenship documents…. even information about her life in the United States after she married my grandfather, Emile. He was born and raised about 10 km from Selestat in a village called St Martin and Eric found information about him too. Double WOW!

We arrived in Selestat on Monday about 5ish in the evening. Fabienne borrowed a car and took us. Since her grandfather, Marius, was my grandmother’s brother, she was also interested in learning more about Selestat and our family. Eric presented us with a small binder of some of the old photos of Selestat and as we walked around, he could show us an old photo of a place and the place as it looks now. For example…

Le Rue de Melsheim (then)

Le Rue de Melsheim (now)

I had told him about the time my grandmother fell into the canal and the women doing laundry at the canal had to fish her out. The last time I was in Selestat, I looked and looked for the canals and couldn’t find any of them. Come to find out, they were part of the streets and had been covered over so they are still there as part of flood control because Selestat was built on a small rise surrounded by a flood plain. WOW. I could just imagine how my Nana had fallen into the canal.

Women washing clothes in a canal in Selestat

Canal in the street of Selestat

The canals being covered over --same street.
They are still there but underground!

Another anecdote was during WWI when Nana told me that they had to hide in the walls of the city to escape the German soldiers. They came out at night and foraged for food. Huh? How did they manage to get inside the walls of the city. Eric showed us one of the entrances and told us the story was true.

Nana went to a girls school for 8 years. Then she moved to Paris at the age of 14. Here's 2 photos of her school.

In addition to showing us the places where Nana and her family had lived, he showed us hidden gems like the narrowest and maybe the oldest building in the town. 

And a beautiful but often bypassed mural. 

There were so many great parts of town we got to experience.

Here we are together...the 3 of us plus Eric.

Here's the Facebook address so you can see the blurb about us...scroll down.

https://www.facebook.com/Greeters.Selestat.Alsace

Toward the end of our time together, Eric revealed a most shocking family secret about Nana’s family. If you really want to know, you’ll have to contact me and I’ll tell you all. Meanwhile, here’s a portrait  my dear Nana and Papa….

 

 

5-23, 24, 25, 2025 Strasbourg

5-24, 25, 2025 Strasbourg

Before leaving Paris we wandered around a bit. We went over to the Train station—Gare de Lyon. Then wandered back.

Before leaving, I took photos of our room. It was so small, that I had to stand in the corner when Teresa needed to cross the room to the bathroom. The bathroom was so small, the toilet paper roll holder extended over the toilet and the shower was so tiny, one couldn’t bend over to wash ones’s feet without hitting one’s head on the sink. I had to extend my camera lens out to get these pictures as I stood in corners and doorways. We were glad to leave. The uber ride to Gare de l’Est took a little less than an hour—about 3 miles.

A word about the TGV (fast train) that we took. It takes about 2 hours to travel from Paris to Strasbourg on this train. It’s a distance of about 305 miles. By car, it would take over 5 hours. By comparison, the distance between Seattle WA and Spokane WA is about 280 miles. Google says it takes 4 hours to drive that but since I have to stop often to stretch and “take care of business,” for me it’s closer to 5 hours. WOW! This train is soooooo fast, smooth and comfortable. 

Speaking of "taking care of business," here is something interesting in the train. When one wants to "do" the business, one is encouraged to wet a paper towel with a bit of sanitizer and wipe the seat. Hmmm.

We arrived in Strasbourg about 4 in the afternoon and took the tram to Aparthotel Adagio de Place Kleber. It’s an apartment. It’s large. It’s fabulous. Tee and I each had our own space. And it’s close to everything. 

The courtyard outside of our apartment

We had to put our key card into this slot in order for all the electric things to work in the apartment. Clever.

After settling in, Tee did laundry...

...while I did a quick walk-around along a familiar route...

...and bought a few things for breakfast. There were so many choices of things to buy. Most of which I even recognized. 

As an impulse, I bought a can of mystery food… Chestnut Spread? It ended up being pretty good on bread.

On Saturday, we wandered over to the cathedral which in my humble opinion is better, more beautiful, more spectacular than Notre Dame. (In my humble opinion). When Teresa saw the Cathedral for the first time, she had the same reaction that everyone has. OMG! WOW! I gave her the outside tour and she took a zillion photos. I thoroughly enjoyed her exclamations of surprise and delight.

Here is a picture of a very famous and very old house in the Cathedral Square.

Later in the day, we took the bus to Bischheim where cousin Fabienne (and Francis) live. She, Fabienne, flew in from Corsica to spend the week with us. It was a surprise to be able to see her so I was happy, happy, happy. We went to one of my favorite restaurants near her house, Le Cheval Blanc, and were joined by other cousins. We ate tarte flambé, a specialty of Alsace. For me it was a wonderful family reunion.

This pic is really s-t-r-e-t-c-h-ed. Sorry. 

This tarte flambee was an apple one, not the usual ham and onion one. It was "flambe-ed" by the server.

On Sunday morning, Teresa went to Mass at the Cathedral. I went with her but had to leave early because the music and reverberation of the voices inside the Cathedral were way, way too loud. My earplugs didn’t even help, and I was going nuts. Anyway, I met up with Fabienne outside the Cathedral and we had a nice chat before Teresa joined us. We walked to where Sandra and Franck (Fabi’s son) were waiting in the car. We squeezed 5 people into their little car and off we went to the Route des Vins (the Wine Route). We went to the little village where Sandra grew up and she regaled us with stories of her mischievous childhood. We had lunch at a restaurant with service so slow, it was almost time for dinner by the time we got our food. I had duck, which is very common here.

After eating, we drove through the absolutely beautiful countryside of Alsace with miles and miles of vineyards covering the valley and hillsides. The weather was cloudy with patches of blue so it was almost magical. We arrived at St Odile, which is a kind of monastery on top of a mountain. Silence and an attitude of prayer and reflection were encouraged. The view from the top was expansive. We could see Germany in one direction and the Vosges Mountains in Lorraine in the other direction.

As we were there, we found ourselves in the midst of a procession with a priest leading a group of people to the viewpoint at the end of the grounds. A nun/sister sang them along. Prayers were said and they returned to the church. I don’t know what this was about, but Teresa was quite overjoyed to see something so authentic and spiritual. She was so close to the priest that she got the perfect picture.

We continued visiting St Odile's...

Upon leaving St.Odile, we drove to Franck and Sandra’s house in a little country village. They moved about a month ago from a small apartment over a noisy bar to a very big house in a quiet little corner of the village. As part of the house tour, Franck showed me his book which he finished writing a couple of months ago. It’s a series of 12 short stories— love stories with a fantastical theme. (One family member referred to it as “porn” but who am I to judge something I can’t really read!?! And there were no pictures to guide my thinking.) Each story has a main character that is a dragon, or a unicorn, or a siren, or a devil, etc.  It was so nice to spend the evening there eating, drinking, and making merry in an Alsatian way.

I can’t believe that the only photo I took was of the peanuts we ate with before-dinner drinks (“apero”)