A trip to Strasbourg had been recommended to me often. The pretty, French city is located in northern Alsace – close to the German border, and is well known for its Christmas markets. Indeed, the city calls itself the Christmas capital – 'Capital de Noel', and with good reason: almost all the open spaces in the city were crammed with stalls, when I visited with some mates this Saturday.
Strasbourg is located along the French – German border, closer to Luxembourg than Switzerland.
Yep, another post about Christmas markets, but this is the season for it, right? So why not consider Strasbourg. Despite being in France, it has a really authentic German style Christmas market, offering a huge amount of stalls - selling bizarre Christmas trinkets and sickly, sweet Vin Chaud (Glühwein or mulled wine). The city itself feels quite festive thanks to all of its decoration and the amount of tourists doing their Christmas shopping.
The city was full of people who had the same idea.
Unfortunately, the masses of tourists and shoppers in the city meant that looking for a restaurant to eat lunch in that was both authentically French and not full, was a challenge that took us on a wild goose chase. After quite some time we managed to find a decent place that didn't have a queue lining up outside. It turned out to be as much of an authentic French restaurant as we could have hoped for. Quality, rare fillet steak was the order of the day and an opportunity we couldn't allow ourselves to miss out on, as the same quality dish in Zurich would have required taking out a small loan.
The search for food took us across the city centre, passing through the picturesque old town.
It was a novelty hearing a language that wasn't German and having to struggle to communicate with anyone. Three years of French at school (and over six years of neglect) have resulted in me having no choice but to utter the most basic of phrases and point at things – with the odd English or German word thrown in for good measure. A pity really, maybe I should give it a shot to pick it back up again. How hard can it really be?
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