Strasbourg

Hi everyone,

I'm wrapping up my first night in Strasbourg. We got here late last night on my first real train! It was a TGV, so the trip only took about 2 hours. Today we spent a lot of time just walking around Strasbourg checking everything out. It's a pretty small city, but there was lots to see. I took lots of pictures, but I won't be able to upload them until I get back. There's a river that runs right through the city, so everything is very picturesque. Because it's so close to the border of Germany, there is a huge German influence everywhere. After getting a little turning around, we found this great restaurant for lunch. Everyone else got Tarte Flambee, which is a traditional German pizza-ish dish with creme fraiche, ham, and onions. I got some sort of spurtzel noodles au gratin with a salad. Very good lunch choices all around (pictures to come!). After lunch, we bought day passes to the museums in Strasbourg. Unlike in Paris, the museums in Strasbourg aren't free because they're not nationally-owned (I think), but it was only 5 euro for a day-long pass to all the museums in the entire town. One museum was a history of the entire Alsace region. There were actually a lot of Jewish artifacts (mainly artwork). It had a lot of artifacts from all sorts of different homes and businesses across the region over hundreds of years. Surprisingly cool. Then we went to a museum just of Strasbourg. Definitely not as good, but still interesting, especially at the price. After a little siesta, we went out for dinner and found some more good French-German food. For dinner, I had potatoes au gratin with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and capers mixed in. Also a really good choice. For some reason, hot red wine here is really popular, so we decided to try that with dinner. Very interesting, but probably not something I'm going to be making at home. For dessert, we had a pretty good apple strudel (for Dad :)), so all in all, a pretty good night. The weather was overcast all day, and it poured at night, but it's still been pretty fun. We're hoping for good weather tomorrow, but who knows?

More updates and pictures later.