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”)