Tag: France

Strasburg France 2023

Saturday 9 September

The neighbours had a party at 2am last night, which kept us awake for hours. The bastards were having a really good time, and I wasnt! So we have been a bit tired and narky today.

It took just 2  hour from Gare L’Est station to Strasbourg, which in on the Rhine on the border with Germany. It has been part of Germany several times, so has a distinctive look and feel compared to Paris.

Our accomodation is a bit out of town, so we left our bags in left luggage and explored the city. The city centre feels spacious and prosperous, lots of it is pedestrianised and has more bikes and trams than cars.  The old part of the city is encircled by rivers, and is full of old squares and quaint old buildings that look much more German than French. The River Ill surrounds the Grand Ile, which is a bit confusing.

The cathedral is quite spectacular and the tower in 142m, 466 feet tall. it was the tallest building in the world until 1874. But in the spirit of completeness I have to say that Lincoln Cathedral was 160m (525 ft) until 1548 when the spire fell down. So in my opinion Lincoln was the champion, but Strasbourg scored in extra time.

The city centre is very pretty and very busy with tourists, I think that Rhine cruises stops there, so lots of senior citizens all enjoy the city at the same time.

In the afternoon it was very hot (again) so we scuttled into a museum like crabs caught in the sunshine. The Rohan Museum is a fine building built for the Prince Bishops of Strasbourg, four of whom were from the Rohan family. The archeological museum in the pleasingly cool basement is worthy, full of Roman remains, but has all the fun of a February Sunday in the 1960’s i.e. a bit dull.

So we got our bags and hopped on the D line tram to our suburban i.e.  cheaper flat. It’s fine, and has an Auchan supermarket nearby.

Sorry, I’m to hot and tired to write entertainingly this evening.

Sunday  10 September

Strasbourg is exceptionally pretty, with many half timbered buildings close to rivers and quaint squares lined with restaurants. We followed a recommended route on a map Julie got from the tourist information office near the cathedral. It went to all the most picturesque sites in the Grand Isle.

The district called Petite France has several bridges over the Ill river (it is ill, not 111 like Napoleon III). There river is fast moving so there are former water mills and a lock to let the Batobus tour boats get through.

There are 3 tall brick towers which were part of the fortications, and a Covered Bridge that no longer has a cover (it’s complicated). 

The Barrage Vaudan is a dam with sluices in it which would allow defenders of Strasbourg to flood part of the city if it got invaded. It sounds bonkers to me, and clearly didn’t stop the Germans 3 times in 1870, 1914 and 1940.

We had a huge burger in the Abattoir bar, not the best name for an eating place, but the beef was very fresh.

After lunch we had a quick walk around Neustadt, the new district built by the Germans on grand imperial style after they took Stratsbourg in 1870.

Eet ees ver ver ot, as they say in French. So I am tapping this out with one finger in the Parc d’Orangerie, which is very beautiful. The gardens are in full bloom and the lawns look perfectly verdant.

Strasbourg has a fantastic public transport system of modern trams and buses and many cycle path. I got a 24 hour pass for trans and buses for 3.70 euros, which is cheap and convenient.

Monday 11 September

So what do you do when you have seen Strasbourg? You go to Colmar because it’s only 30 minutes away on the train and it’s like Strasbourg but condensed.

Also since we have our Interrail passes it’s very easy to take another journey. Basically I find the journey on the Interrail app, tap a digital switch and hey presto a digital ticket appears that I can show the train guard. Simples.

Colmar looks like a film set, the old town is full of colourful half timbered buildings with a picture perfect river running through it.

Versions of it have inspired villages in the films Beauty and the Beast and Howls Moving Castle, and many fairy tale books.

This is called the Pfister House.  Honestly.

Consequently it is busy with visitors and those little tourist road trains that transport the less able and less slender around town.

It’s much smaller than Stratsbourg, so in 3 hours we had seen the town and had lunch. I thought I would try Choucroute for lunch, which I supposed to be a local speciality. It is a heap of sauerkraut with one potato, topped with 6 types of processed pork.  I ate it all, I’m pleased I ate it, but I don’t want to eat it again.

Hot pig and salty cabbage mmmmm

Returning to Strasbourg we went to the Museum of Alsace which is housed in old houses by the River Ill. It was somewhere to go in the shade, and is a collection of rooms with old furniture and domestic furnishings in it. It was moderately interesting, but not exactly fun.

Go there if it’s raining, baking hot or if you love old French stoves.

We have been self catering quite a lot in our rented flats, it’s too expensive to eat out all the time. But I mustn’t moan, I’m having a wonderful time!

Alsace is a useful transition to Germany, and tomorrow we are going the whole hog (more bacon) and travelling to Munich.

Europe Interrail Trip 2023

Away to Paris

September 5 2023

Leaving our house to begin the adventure 

Northern France is tearing past at enormous speed as our Eurostar heads to Paris beneath a cloudless sky. Just about everyone we know have told us “you do know the Rugby World Cup is on in France, don’t you?”. I come from Twickenham, the most rugbyest place in the world, I think I can easily avoid the fans in Paris , like I have for the past thirty six years in my home town.

There are four fans sat across the carriage and they are all perfectly civilised and haven’t opened a single can of beer – yet.

Paris is the first leg of our big European adventure by rail, and the exciting thing is we don’t know exactly where we are doing. If there is rain in Austria, we won’t go there. A revolution in Slovenia?  That can be bypassed. Outbreak of Black Death in Budapest? We will cross it off our list and take our trolley bags somewhere else.

The cafe on the train sold Metro tickets, so I bought ten of them for the next few days (£19.80 if you’re interested). At the Gare de Nord we swept past all the mugs queueing for tickets and smugly went straight to the Metro Line 5 ticket gate. The bastard machine would not let us through, I’m sure that it was thinking “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries, I fart in your general direction”. Thus crestfallen, we queued for 45 minutes to exchange them for functioning tickets. Merde!

Our accommodation is on Rue Stendall, a few kilometres out of the centre. After dumping our bags we headed out into the very hot Parisian sunshine along Rue de Pyrenees. It is a very lively interesting Rue, lines with eating places and shops of all types. 

We had a look around Bellville, which is hilly, diverse  and has a shabby chic vibe like Hackney. Following a self-guided walk we found the Bellville Viewpoint, which is over 100 metres above Paris with great views of the city centre and the Eiffel Tower.

Conveniently there was a cafe next to it serving bier blonde, perfect. Having gathered an appetite from our walk we went back to Rue Pyrenees and found a  little Italian restaurant and had pizza. On a hot evening I just can’t face frogs legs or snails.

Wednesday 6 September

Since it’s very hot today, we are on our way to the Coulee Verte Rene  Dumont, a long elevated park on a former railway.

To get there we walked through Pere Lachaise cemetery, the biggest in Paris. It has many famous dead people in it, but sorry Jim Morrison I prefer seeing my rock stars alive. It has thousands of huge and impressive tombs. There is a direct relationship between the size of tomb and the size of ego. Yes Pharaoh Cheops I’m talking about you.

Fred Flintstones tomb

The cemetery covers a huge hillside and  is worth a visit to marvel at the marble.

The Coulee Verte is perfect for a hot day, lovely gardens with benches in the shade. Ideal for people watching i.e making bitchy comments about people just after they have walked past. “I hope that’s her father and not her husband”, “sandals with socks just look stupid”, “too many croissants for breakfast I reckon”

Ah, the simple pleasures of life.

It was too hot to walk any more so we took the metro to the Musee Carnavalet. It is both free and cool (thermodynamically speaking) so ideal for a very hot afternoon. The museum is devoted to the history of Paris and it’s enormous, it’s on the scale of the V&A. I would recommend it to anyone who likes history and beautiful art. It has a cafe in a central garden, the prices are ridiculous but the museum is free.

The only catch is that it’s like a maze, and navigating the museum is a challenge. But worth it to see all the portraits of Revolutionaries who got their heads chopped off. 

A short walk away is Place de Voges, which has to be the most perfect square of houses in the world. It has 17th century mansions on all sides and a public park in  the middle.

Thursday 7 September

Today, we are mostly walking down Seine. The start was near Austerlitz Station, a battle where Napoleon beat the Austrians and Russians. Of course we have Waterloo Station named after the battle where we (plus Marshall Bluchers Prussians) beat the French. Napoleon dressed in a satin jump suit and sang “I was defeated you won the war”.

Enough of that bollocks.

Julie found a walk on the Paris Tourism website, which followed the Seine west (ish). The sun was beating down like an Essex tanning booth giving a pre-Benidorm booster tan. We admired all the magnificent sights along the river: the bridges, palaces, galleries etc etc. But after a while, yer know.. they get a bit..samey.

Lunch was a supermarket salad-in-a-box, sustaining but not the three courses plus wine in a bistro that I really fancied. The Seine has some really bloody big barges on it, they are the size of destroyers! I think that skiffing would not be sensible on the Seine. This one was hauling aggregate to make Lafarge concrete, it must save many truck journeys.

We had a quick look at the Notre Dame, which still hasn’t got a roof on it. The builder promised to get it finished by September, but apparently he has started another job down the road.

Next to the Musee D’Orsay is the snappily named “Musee National de la Legion d’Honneaur et des Orders de Chevalerie”. It was free, cooler than outside and had a toilet, so ticked all the boxes. It was stuff with stars, cloaks, chains, swords and medals that various kings and queens like to give to each other to boost their egos. My favourite was a goldie-looking-chain that Queen Vic gave to Louis Phillipe, King of the French. He is my bestest French monarch since he lived in Twickenham in Orleans House, when he was the Duc d’ Orleans.

“I used to live in Twickenham ma’am” 

“Oh lovely, we go through it on the train to Windsor”

We made our way to the Eiffel Tower creeping in the shadows like Gollum, it was RF hot. The Tower is just like it is in the pictures, been there, done that. 

This is my favourite photo of the day, a bronze Rhino outside the Musee d’Orsay. They say it’s good luck to tickle its testicles.

Friday 8 September

Yesterday was a bit exhausting, we walked about 10 miles in the heat. It didn’t cool down much overnight, so didn’t sleep well. 

This morning we went to the epicentre of tourism in Paris, Montmartre. I’m sure it was a delightful hill top village a hundred years ago, now it is like Hampstead combined with Camden Lock. There are many restaurants and souvenir shops crammed into picturesque little streets and squares. We admired the view from Sacre Coeur, walked around a bit with the great unwashed masses and then decided to Get Outta Dodge.

At the bottom of the hill on Rue Tardieu I found Bella Italia (no, not that one). It was not busy, had an attractive menu (5’5″, 36 24 36) and a come hither look. Dear readers, I had the best meal I have eaten in Paris, an escalope of veal in a cream and mustard sauce with spaghetti on the side. But since it’s only the second meal I have eaten in a restaurant in Paris so far, it’s not a big survey.

Getting back on the Metro we we to Porte Dauphine at the end of the line to visit the Bois de Boulogne. I had visions of jeune fils riding bikes, handsome men playing tennis in whites, and cafes with biere blonde. What we got was like Barnes Common, but considerably larger and with more traffic. I had considered taking Julie rowing on the lake. but it was just too bloody hot for that kind of exertion, and I’m a hardened skiffer!

Julie found the Foundation Louis Vuitton on Google Maps, not far away down a busy road. It is a fantastic art gallery/performance space paid for by Bernard Arnault, who is one of the richest men in France. It was designed by Frank Gehry who designed the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and looks like a Sci Fi spaceship. We paid 4 Euros to go and have a look round, and it was well worth it. The building itself is a work of art, on multiple levels with outdoor terraces, reflecting ponds and a huge cascade down steps. The outside is constructed of 12 “sails” wrapping around an internal structure of steel and wooden glue laminated beams.

From there we took an electric shuttle bus through dreadful Parisian rush hour traffic to the Arc de Triomphe to get the metro back to Gambetta. Tonight we are giving our livers a night off and didn’t stop at the bar or buy any wine in Franprix. It’s a necessary nod towards healthy living, but takes a will of steel on a hot evening on holiday.

A 2CV in Montmartre, sadly the driver wasn’t wearing a beret or carrying a baguette.