Hopping the border to France

On our third day in the Black Forest we headed out on a sunny morning to make the trip to the French city of Strasbourg.

It's only an hour away by train, and our Konus card covered our fare all the way to the town of Kehl, at which point we had to actually pay for a ticket = (

Strasbourg has over the years switched between being under both German and French control, and we were quite looking forward to seeing the clash of cultures.

Trying to hold back the excitement..

After arriving in Strasbourg, and leaving the station, we crossed the river into the city proper. The architecture was predominantly German, however there was still a strong French feel. This was pretty unsurprising considering the history of the city; it's changed hands so many times, and there are still some areas of the city which look German or French only.

Strasbourg is very famous for its Christmas Market held every year since 1570. It combines elements of Swiss, German and French Christmas traditions. I imagine visiting at Christmas would be amazing with the snow in the Black Forest.

There wasn't any one thing we wanted to see specifically in Strasbourg, so we found ourselves just wandering the back streets. This is actually our favourite way to explore, as it means we can avoid the hordes of tourists who are often found in the more popular cities. It also means we end up seeing a slightly more authentic side of the city, rather than the main sites which are sometimes spoiled by the crowds, and hundreds of souvenir stores.

After criss-crossing the city, and the river, we eventually found our way to Strasbourg's most famous landmark, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg.

The Cathedral is one of the most impressive landmarks in the city, and is a classic example of late Gothic architecture. It was the tallest building in the world between 1647 and 1874, and is still the sixth tallest church in the world today.

We have seen so many churches on our travels, and while they can start to all blend together after a while, we still continue to amazed by the amazing architecture and the work that goes into preserving the churches over hundreds of years. I especially love the stained glass, the stained glass windows in the Strasbourg Cathedral were particularly beautiful.

We lunched on French croque monsieur and German pastries, but considering it was Easter Sunday, could not pass up the little chocolate store we found. After taking an extremely long time to decide what to buy, we decided on a packet of assorted chocolate animals. They were so cute!

They reminded me of the chocolates we brought when we were in Bruges.

This street was hung with the flags of the communes (towns) of the Bas-Rhin area. It reminded me of when we were in San Gimignano, they had similar flags all throughout the streets. It's so festive, like the towns in the Cotswolds that are decorated with bunting.

It was very easy to get turned around while wandering the backstreets when they all looked like this...

We found ourselves in Petite France, where there is the option of taking a river cruise through the city, however we passed on this due our previously mentioned aversion to tourists (we don't travel with a backpack or matching jackets, and don't consider ourselves tourists).

As we were crossing the bridge however, we were stopped and couldn't go any further. As the boat is too tall to go under the bridge, they have to move the bridge out of the way! So instead of raising the bridge, it spins all the way around to the side so the boat can go through, then it spins right back. It was slightly unnerving crossing the bridge that had been spinning a few seconds earlier..

We headed back to the train for the relatively long ride back to Schiltach, luckily we still had some chocolates for sustenance.

We once again ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was really yummy as we had come to expect. Above are the two soups we had for entrees. Couldn't for the life of me say what they were called, but they were definitely delicious. It was good to be back in Germany!