Strasbourg!

9 to 10 December

9 December

Today was the day I had been looking forward to probably since we moved here. The Christmas market in Strasbourg!!! We made some relatively last minute plans with Jenny & Pierre one time when we were hanging out and got lucky to find an Airbnb so we said why not. We were up early so that we could take the RER B out to meet Jenny & Pierre at Gare de Villepinte. We did this because they have a car and since we did everything so last minute the cost of the train tickets for the weekend were astronomical.

After about 4 and a half hours of driving we arrived at our Airbnb in Strasbourg. This was the first time these people were renting their home through Airbnb so they were slightly unorganized to leave for the weekend, but were extremely nice and gave us some great recommendations.

We got ourselves settled in then walked to tram station so we could head into town. The nice thing about this Airbnb is it was just on the outskirts of town and not far from a tram stop that took you straight into the center of the city. After taking the tram we walked around Place Broglie at the largest of the Christmas markets and grabbed some food for lunch, along with some vin chaud of course. After taking in the first market we continued to walk around making our way to the cathedral where there was another market outside. We also took the time to go inside for a little to check out the church all decked out for Christmas.

At this point it wasn’t time for dinner yet so we decided to grab some drinks at The Dubliners. After a few drinks and watching some football we walked around down by the river some more, but boy was it COLD! We should have known this would be a precursor for tomorrow…

We hadn’t made a reservation because the places that were recommended to us were either full, or not open tonight. We really couldn’t find a place to eat, but eventually we found Brasserie de la Lanterne (thanks to Rick of course) which we read had good tapas as well as brick oven pizza. For being slightly concerned about finding a place for a while it turned out great and they had great homemade beer as well. We enjoyed our dinner and some more drinks and then after a walk through the main part of town we took the tram back and were back at Airbnb by 11:30pm.

Once we got back none of us were really ready for bed so we opened a bottle of wine and played some UNO (it’s what they had in the apartment) for a while before eventually heading to bed.

10 December

As I kind of alluded to previously we should have known what might be in store for us this morning as when we woke up it was snowing!!

After getting very excited about the snow we got everything packed up and into the car and headed out from the Airbnb just after 11am.

We headed back into the center of the city and walked all around downtown area enjoying the snow, as it eventually let up, before our lunch at Restaurant L’Ami Schutz per recommendation from Airbnb. We were very happy with this recommendation as it was a typical regional restaurant with great food and a cool atmosphere.

After lunch we all had a little more shopping to do at the markets to make sure we got what we came for and then it was off to Germany. Why Germany you say well because we were so close and since 3 of the 4 of us had never been to Germany before we figured why not make a quick stop in Saarbrucken since it was pretty much on our way home.

Once we arrived and found a parking spot we took a quick walk around the city, had some hot chocolate and coffee and then we were on our way back to Paris.

Luckily the temperatures had increased so the roads were much better and 3h 30mins later and we were back near Paris where Jenny and Pierre could drop us off at an RER A station and get home easily.