Strasbourg, France

DAY 1:

After 7 painful hours aboard a bus, we arrived in Strasbourg and we checked into our hotel (the Ibis). We took up half of a hall in the middle of the hotel (poor planning on the manager’s part if you ask me). Jess Dante & I roomed together, a.k.a. slept together because our double room was really like a closet with two twin beds pushed together in the middle, haha.

From the hotel, we left to tour the European Parliament. It is absolutely massive in size and completely gorgeous. It definitely doesn’t fit into the rest of the historical city with its glass, curved walls. We were given a TERRIBLE tour guide. Our guide explained [like] the history of the European Parliament, [so like] there’s a history of the Parliament, [like] they meet once a month for a week, [so like] they meet for a week out of each month… He repeated everything he said about 12 times in 3 different ways with either “like” or “so like” in between everything he said. It was SO hard to focus. I don’t know where he learned his English, but I’ve definitely tried for the past however many years NOT to say “like”… and he lectured on for about 40 minutes when it could have been about 10. Anyway… it was definitely cool to see the VIP red carpet and staircase and the chamber. Oh man, the chamber was so cool. It was huge!! I can’t even start to think about all that has been decided there.

After our tour of the Parliament, we went back to the hotel, changed, and walked to dinner. Jim Kelly led us across the town of Strasbourg (a very pretty walk!) and down into the basement of a brewery. They brought us all plastic cups, followed by pitchers of the house beer, and tarte flambé (French pizza-type things). The best part… it was all you could eat & drink… not to mention we were STARVING!! We just kept passing back empty pitchers and empty pizza boards until we couldn’t take anymore (and that took a while). Thanks JMU!

We went back to the hotel and then to the karaoke bar across the street, where we had to impatiently wait for the football game to end for us to be able to start belting out American classics… Gloria Gaynor’s “I will Survive” (the guys) and the Spice Girls’ “If you wanna be” (the ladies). Mike and I shared a contraption called The Giraffe, which essentially provided us with enough beer to get through the night in one container.

DAY 2:

Thursday morning we woke up and had breakfast in the hotel (we packed ourselves lunch, too!) and headed out to the bus for our tour of wine country. Serg, our French guide, was everything I’d expect from a wine country guide. He had the perfect accent, haircut, moustache, scarf…the whole deal. He pointed out literally EVERYTHING (including police pulling people over, a random tractor protest, a junkyard) on the way to wine country. The roads were lined with vineyard as far as the eye could see, it was GORGEOUS!! Definitely a beautiful area… I’d love to come back for a honeymoon or an anniversary.

We made three stops in the Alsace region along wine road. The first stop was Kaysersberg, a pretty little town from the 1600s. The buildings were all so cute, and I was impressed that they were still standing with the way that their roofs leaned and fell into each other. We saw lots of the famous pottery from the region, and of course shops with lots of wine! Stop number 2 was in Colmar, the Capitol of the Wine Route, and the birthplace of Bartholdi (designer of the Statue of Liberty). Here we got free time for lunch and wandering. A group of us went to a small French café for lunch where we could sit outside. I got wine and quiche Lorraine, YUM! Next we stopped at Riquewihr, where we got the chance to head into a wine cellar and actually taste some wine. We tasted the vineyards’ Riesling, Pinot Gris, and Gewurztraminer. My favorite was the Riesling, a little drier, not so sweet. That night we got take away pasta, which we ate on the steps of the Cathedral, and we bought a bottle of wine to drink by the canal. It was a relaxing evening for our next busy day.

DAY 3:

Friday morning we did a bus/walking tour of Strasbourg (with Serg again, ya gotta love it), and got to see all over the town, and then we were off! We got our stuff together and headed for the train station to head out for Interlaken!