THURSDAY IN STRASBOURG

Today was another fun day exploring Strasbourg and another big Christmas Market.

Unlike yesterday, we didn't get an early start.  We slept until 7:30, which is very late for us.  We lounged around, and didn't leave our apartment until 11:30.

Despite our late start, we walked miles and miles.  We crossed Strasbourg to visit a market on the east side of town.  It was actually a nice walk;  we poked along, enjoying the decorations in the windows.  The French have a term for window shopping, "leche-vitrine", which means lick the window!

These windows would qualify,  I think!

So simple, yet so pretty:

Here's a bakery/pastry shop--love the decorations:

I even found Santa!

Some other pretty street scenes on the way to the market:

 Cheery flower shop:

A gallery window featuring Russian Christmas decorations:

This made me smile:

The snowmen and St. Nicholas were all elaborately painted--very whimsical:

A double-decker horse and carriage:

After lots of wandering and several twists and turns, we found the market--and it was a big one!

There were rows of Christmas decorations and Christmas lights:

Christmas trees and mistletoe for sale.  (This market is set up in a park, the odd looking bare tree is one of many lining the street)  We looked at the price of the trees--Yikes--many EuroS!!

There was more food than you can imagine!

Sausages of every kind:

Pretzels--hard pretzels, soft pretzels, hot pretzels, pretzels with cheese, sweet pretzels…..

Cheese, cheese and more cheese:

 Flambee baguette: Hot open face baguettes topped with melted cheese and assorted goodies:

Crepes!  We shared a goat cheese, emmenthal, ham and creme fraiche crepe--here's the nice young lady cooking it up for us.  It was delicious!

We had decided that we'd "snack our way thru the day"--and we did a pretty good job of it!  We didn't have an actual sit-down meal, but instead shared a few treats.  There have been soooo many things that looked delicious, and today was a good day to try some.

Here's David biting into a B-I-G chocolate candy.  I'm not sure what they're called--but we've seen them at every market.   They come in many different flavors, we chose rum raisin.  The filling was light and fluffy, kind of like a marshmallow.  Yummy good!

After we left the market we continued roaming around, and eventually ended up at Notre Dame Cathedral.  We had a good view of the detail on the east side, here are some close ups:

Can you imagine how many men and how many hours (years? decades?) it took to carve the decoration on this cathedral? It's amazing.

A very creepy looking gargoyle.  Matt, I thought you'd enjoy this!

We wandered the tiny streets towards home, and look what we found!

The Village of the Beer! (blurry pic-sorry)

 We had a great time looking at all the different beer, and picked up 3 new ones to try.

David, in his element!

We walked a few more blocks, and decided we should check our map.  We did---and darned if we hadn't been walking the wrong way from the church!  We are seriously directionally impaired sometimes.

So plan B was find the nearest tram stop and ride back to our neighborhood.  It was windy, cold and raining, so we didn't feel like backtracking.  The tram took us back to our neighborhood in no time!

In need of a hot drink and a "sit down" to rest our weary feet, we found a small cafe and had a vin chaud and shared a slice of quiche Lorraine. It was delicious!

After a quick stop on the grocery for more eggs and a quick pop into the corner bakery for a fresh baguette, we turned down our narrow lane to our apartment.  We dropped off our heavy bags (beer!), and decided to go right back out.  We wanted to check out a market just down the street from us--we'd been told a vendor there was serving hot beer.  Yup--hot beer!

Here's David with our bier chaud.  It was good, not great.  It's sweetened with honey and had a faint spice flavor.  It was fun to try it, but we think we'll stick to hot wine!

Even in the rain and wind, we were enjoying walking along the canals, sipping our hot beer.  We crossed a couple of bridges and found ourselves in a different neighborhood with lots of interesting restaurants.  We stopped at several to check out their menus and found one that specializes in baeckeoffe.  Tomorrows dinner choice for sure!

We slowly made our way back home, and we are relaxing for the rest of the night.  Dinner?  Just another light snack of sausage, cheese and baguette.  And of course, a couple of those beers we bought today!

Good night from wet and windy Strasbourg……….