Strasbourg, France :: April 2011
By Paris Pâtisseries in Out and About
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As you guys saw in Part 1 of the Mulhaupt Chronicles last Tuesday, I ran off to Strasbourg, France a couple weeks ago. Aside from wanting to meet and photograph Monsieur Mulahupt, I was also just excited to soak in the splendor of the Alsatian capital. I didn’t really have a gameplan of places to visit though. My policy was to be one of “aggressive wandering”, and as you’ll see, I stumbled across some thoroughly picturesque spots.
The above is just the town church, and by “town church” I mean . . . tremendously famous massive Gothic Cathedral. Until you see it in person, you can’t believe how enormous (142m) or ornate it is. Plus, it doesn’t seem to matter where you’re standing in town; you can almost always spot it towering over the tops of the other buildings. Case-in-point is the shot below. Don’t you wish the bridge in front of your house and all the bridges in your neighborhood looked just like that? Hmm? Your neighborhood doesn’t have 5 million storybook bridges like Strasbourg? Sadly, few do. Lucky Strasbourgians!
But you do have swans swimming through your canals, right? No? No swans? And no canals? Me neither. These people live in a fairy tale!
I wasn’t kidding about the bridge situation. Every block or two around the old city, there’s a bridge. Most just span the canals they constructed, but then there are the big ones going across the Ill River. The below is just another footbridge over the canals. See the little paths in the grass there? People just walk along those to get to work, when they’re not riding on the city’s super-futuristic trams. I only wish I’d taken a shot of those. It blows your mind that in Hansel & Gretel world, it feels like the Jetsons also took up residence. Strasbourg is as much a historic city as it is a modern wonderland.
As much as I love Paris, I wouldn’t mind living in the center house below for a week. How better to improve my odds of spotting the troll who clearly lives beneath the bridge there. I mean . . . seriously. I have no doubt Strasbourg has taken every effort to maintain all facets of medieval life: buildings, bridges, cathedrals, trolls and certainly a Smurf enclave or two.
Even my camera did a little time travel when I snapped the shot below. I had it set, as normal, but when the shutter clicked, the LCD read, “This scene is far too olden-timey to be kept in color. Automatic black-and-white conversion in progress.” I’m just lucky a Daguerreotype didn’t pop out.
Exhausted from all the history and culture I was consuming, I decided to swing by Monsieur Mulhaupt’s pastry shop and grab a lingot of pain d’épices. I didn’t want to look like a glutonous tourist or anyting, so I carefully broke off small pieces from the loaf and chewed them when no one seemed to be looking. I most definitely did not attempt to jam the entire thing into my face, while holding my camera at arm’s length, looking as though someone just caught me ********* in public. So I’m really not sure how this picture got in the mix . . .
I was able to snag a little nap between the spice bread inhalation and my next adventure – heading to that crazy cathedral. Just check out how detailed this thing is! And that’s only a tiny bit of the main façade. The entire structure is enormous like you can’t believe. The mix of colored stones makes it look even more insanely over-to-top complicated.
Once you get inside, the aesthetics are a little more subdued. That said, there are still some incredibly dazzling stained-glass windows and then this ginormous pipe organ. Can you imagine listening to someone play that way back in the day? All the crazy town-folk would stop their kugelhopf making, blacksmithery, and sausage-stuffing and would crowd into the ominous cathedral and listen to this puppy. That’d be an experience.
Post-cathedral, I was again overtaken by an urge for pastries. So I strolled way out to Ziegler on the Avenue Forêt Noire and purchased the below. One was a raspberry/mascarpone/macaron treat (it was ok – no Marie-Antoinette/Ispahan or anything) and the other one, which looked either like a brown pickle or a glazed ****, was a actually a caramel éclair. I must say it was quite tasty, even if the caramel was a wee bit overcooked.
And, to finish out our adventure, I thought I’d take you by the village Alchemist’s shop. Not kidding. Click on the photo and you can zoom in to see that the building is clearly labeled as the home of “l’Alchimiste”. Unfortunately for me, I was carrying a scant 20 grams of lead on me at the time. But it only took him an hour or so to convert it into gold. Minus a small fee, I had enough left over to pay for both my hotel and the train ride home. Could I really ask for more?
So I’m going to give Strasbourg a big thumbs up. Home to wonderful pastries, an amazing cathedral, more bridges than you can shake a stick at, futuristic trams, swans and possibly even a troll, it’s totally worth the visit. I think my 3 day stay was the perfect amount of time to soak it in. Have you been there, lived there, or have I inspired you to pay a visit? Leave a comment below.
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