Hi and Happy New Year! Over the long winter holiday, Allison and I decided to trade in the relative warmth of Malta for a truly European Christmas Vacation. As we spent three+ weeks traveling France and Austria (and a little bit of northern Italy), I'm going to break our trip up into a few posts.
Milano...
From Malta, we began our trip in Milan and for several reasons I won't expend many words on that. We weren't there for very long, but the city and northern Italy in general did not appear very nice, a feeling confirmed on our return train trip through Lombardy. The north of Italy is heavy on industry, which does nothing to add to an already featureless and colorless landscape. Plus it rained the whole time, which was, happily, the vast majority of the rain we encountered on the whole trip.
We only had that evening and the next morning to take in the town, so we headed out to that singular feature of European cities that stands as a beacon, signaling 'come here for things to see, do, eat, and buy': the cathedral, or in this Italian case,
il Duomo. It's a beautiful building but sadly had a good bit of scaffolding for renovations around it. We enjoyed wandering the arcade and alleys of the surrounding area but didn't get to see much at all of this city, which is actually one of Europe's largest and wealthiest metropolitan areas.
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| train station in Milan |
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| Il Duomo |
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| Lazer Tree! |
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| Sean & Lego Santa |
En Route...
The next day, the real adventure began. Our flight arrived in Paris only a little bit late, which was impressive as most of European travel was extremely gummed up by extreme weather. Still, we were pressed for time in making our way from Charles de Gaulle to the main train terminal.
After giving up on a no-show shuttle bus, we headed for the local city train. We were cutting it extremely close when, naturally, the train stopped because someone on board pulled an alarm. Faced with the decision of waiting for the train to resume or forging our own way, I decided to be a man of action which of course was the wrong decision. We ran out of the train and into the rain in search of a taxi because hey, it's one of the world's major cities, how hard could it be to find a cab? Well, after frantically running around in search of the non-existent cabs and asking bus drivers if they were headed our way in stilted French, we returned, defeated, cold, wet and too late to catch our train.
But in every cloud lies a silver lining. As part of those weather related delays we had not missed our train (hooray!) and it would in fact be many hours late (booo!). After a lot of waiting and a little haggling, we actually managed to get onto an earlier train that got us there faster and sooner than our original one, plus we got bumped to first class for a meager 15 Euros. Thanks are in order to that nice French train conductor.
Christmas Wonderland
Our destination, I've been remiss to state, was Strasbourg, France in the Alsace region which is near the German border. How did we end up in eastern France for Christmas, you are not doubt not wondering. Well, because of Japan. Many moons ago we lived there and Allison saw a TV special about the Christmas market in Strasbourg (which is weird because we didn't have TV) and, apparently, we've been destined to visit ever since that fateful day.
We got into Strasbourg late that night and after a short tram ride followed by some meandering down the city streets, we made our way to the Hotel Cathedral (I told you about those) located right next to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg (Our Lady, when translated into French is
Notre Dame, which sounds way fancier. Unless you're talking about the football team). Construction began on the cathedral in the 1100's and continued for several hundred years. For about 200 years, up until 1874, it was the world's tallest building. Also, Strasbourg was home to Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century, where he worked on one of the most important inventions in history: the movable-type printing press.
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| Examining the Church social calendar |
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| Inside the Cathedral |
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| Johannes Gutenberg |
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| Europe does Christmas lights way better than America |
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For three festive days, we wandered the streets of Strasbourg, taking in all of the Christmasy goodness and goodies. The Cathedral is surrounded by the main, but by no means only, Christmas market. I believe there are about ten. Our day would begin with breakfast and then we would proceed to eat our way about town. One of the mainstays of the markets is
vin chaud, or hot wine, in both the red and white varietals. It's often sweetened with some sort of yummy juice. And the snacks, oh the snacks! Crepes of every flavor, pretzels with salt or sugar or chocolate, sweets of every kind, hot baguettes, and just anything else to delight your palette.
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| Hot Wine |
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| "Give me a keg of beer." |
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| park at night |
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| Good Beer!!! |
But as it was pretty cold, and began to snow on day two, we couldn't just stand outside eating and drinking all the time. So we broke things up by heading inside to eat and drink. I was thrilled to find a great bar that sold all manner of delicious, real beer. I should point out that Malta is decidedly lacking in anything resembling a Trappist ale. Other than Guinness, your options range from about 5 variations of watery, yellow swill which is why I've taken to drinking cider.
The daytime was mere snacking though; dinner was when the real culinary treats came. Alsacian food leans more towards the German side than French, so it's heavy on things like sauerkraut, sausages, potatoes, etc. Our first dinner was good, not great, but nights two and three were absolutely amazing. I tried snails for the first time and have to say they are terrific, though that probably has more to do with the copious amounts of butter and garlic than the gastropod, but they do have a nice earthy flavor and unique, rubbery texture. Night two we decided to ditch our reservations and head directly across our hotel to Maison Kammerzell, a restaurant in a building from the 16th century. My steak was a delight, but the real interest was Allison's 3 fish dish with sauerkraut, which worked exceptionally well together despite the seemingly odd paring.
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| Christmas Day feast |
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| Cathedral and Maison Kammerzell |
Anticipating spending Christmas day in our hotel, we planned ourselves a nice little early lunch of some local beers, champagne, bread, spreads, cheeses and sweets. After enjoying our in-room meal, we decided to investigate outside some more and were happy to find the Christmas market springing to life around mid-day. We both got to call home and talk to our families, and Allison only cried once.
Overall, we really enjoyed our days of taking in this bit of old Europe with our eyes and mouths. The combination of the centuries' old architecture, festive Christmas spirit expressed in the markets and decorations everywhere all punctuated with white, fluffy snow was like a Hallmark Card sprung to life. If we couldn't be with family on Christmas, this was definitely the second best option.
On the next blog, we make our way to Paris, City of
Lights Lines, for museums, museums and more museums! Also, we get to experience some of that famed French hospitality.
Finally, we would like to send our get-well wishes to our friend Krissy who has come down sick while traveling in Borneo. We know she's in good hands with her hubby, Norch.
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| the main square |
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| river with snow |
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| Allison and Christmas lights |
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| Troll beer |
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| river at night |
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