My Passport’s Travels

We were up early this morning for breakfast. I had a lovely, made-to-order omelette, bacon and a croissant with Marmelade and Mom had Eggs Benedict (a little runny, but not as runny as she’d like). The Maitre’d stopped by with a fresh pastry to try – layers of puff pastry with a vanilla cream inside. It was very good and crispy.

We bundled up and met our 8:15 excursion (we chose to pay for this one, instead of the complementary city tour): Panoramic Strasbourg by Land and Water. We walked out and were greeted by the sight of 6-7 longboats from several river cruise companies all tied up in a long row. Later, on a different inlet, we’d see even more! We met our guide – Gerard (who sounds like Maurice d’Chevalier when he talks). He’s native to the Alsace region and delightful to listen to. He loaded us onto our bus (with this warning on it).

After a short 5 minute drive we were dropped off and loaded onto our canal boat.

The ride went around the city center, during which Gerard explained the history of this 2,000-year-old city. It’s changed countries several times, most recently back and forth and back again between France and Germany. The tour also went through through two locks – one up and one down! You can see the wall height changing in the pictures.

We disembarked and had a short walk to the Strasbourg Cathedral Notre Dame – a beautiful Gothic cathedral from the 1200s. Gerard showed us the (free!) public restrooms, where we can meet the guide for the busses back to the ship later and set us loose on the town.

The markets don’t open until 11:30, so Mom and I chose to start in the cathedral.

Upon entering, you are greeted with an enormous Astronomical Clock. We had just missed its 10:30 activity and didn’t make it back around to see anything later (evidently it does something every 15 minutes). It’s one of the ‘must sees’ on all the lists about Strasbourg, but to be honest, we were underwhelmed. I didn’t even manage to take a picture of it. We did find this statue overlooking everything, though!

We found the three organs, but sadly, no concert today.

The nativity was huge! It started with Gabriel visiting Mary and the vignettes continued through the escape to Egypt. The Bible in the manger scene will be replaced by the baby Jesus on Christmas.

The last chapel we toured contained the relics from St. Alphonse-Marie, a nun from the region.

While I was visiting the bookstore, (where we found a lovely little nativity with the Holy Family in traditional Alsace clothing) Mom waited outside. As I came out – we were swept up in a sea of humanity. We were getting thrown out of the cathedral! Actually, we had been warned that there was something happening with the Astrological Clock and that the cathedral would close to visitors at 11:15, but we were surprised by the security sweep of the building.

The markets were starting to open, so we wandered through the Cathedral Square market.

Gerard had told us earlier about the storks – they’re a symbol of Strasbourg and live here from March through early November. They have a story – leave a cube of sugar by the window and in 9 months, the storks will visit and bring you a baby. If you leave 2 cubes of sugar, they’ll leave a baby girl (because girls are extra sweet).

We visited three other markets, making our total 4 of the 11 markets visited. First, The Place Gutenberg market near the Advent Calendar and Teddy Bear buildings (also our meeting point for the walk back to the bus later):

Place Saint-Thomas, where we had a wonderful snack of Flambé Raclette – an open-faced sandwich with goat cheese, thin-sliced sweet onion, bacon bits and Raclette cheese that was broiled until it was piping hot.

Place Kleber, where I had Noel Bier (a local beer with mulling spices) and a spätzle with cheese and bacon bits. Mom had sauerkraut with sausages.

Some other lovely sights we wandered Old Town Strasbourg.

At this point – we were about done. The last 45 minutes or so had gotten really crowded in the markets, so we started making our way to the meeting place for the shuttle back to the longboat. We did stop at Waffle Factory for some dessert – we each got a coffee and shared a waffle with vanilla pastry cream, salted caramel and spiced pecans. SO GOOD!

We had chosen to stay in town and take advantage of the shuttles offered by Viking to return to the ship, rather than taking the earlier shuttle back with our tour guide. We knew about where to meet up, and were glad to find some others that we knew from previous meals also waiting in the area. The guide arrived and off we went – we had been told it would be a 10-15 minute walk to the busses, because Strasbourg closes off street access to vehicles when the markets are open.

After the short bus ride back, Mom and I decided to stop at the lounge for a drink and while we were there, some friends we had met at dinner earlier on the cruise joined us. We sat and visited with them for almost an hour before heading down to the stateroom to relax.

After watching the port talk to prepare for tomorrow (it was streamed through to stateroom TVs), we headed up for German Night in the restaurant. We were greeted with a shot of schnapps – Whoa! That was rough! But the table was filled with Pretzels, cheeses and salamis to help. Everyone got a bowl of German Wedding Soup (which wasn’t familiar at all to me, but very good!). Then we sat. And sat. And sat. And they finally came by to clear our soup plates and explain that we could either get a plate with small bites of everything to try or we could go to the buffet and get larger servings of the things we wanted. We chose the buffet and enjoyed käsewurst (sausage with cheese), bratwurst, red cabbage, sourkraut, fried chicken and a Knödel (pretzel dumpling). Oh- and cheese spatzle! (And our drinks were never delivered – although I definitely needed the water, so it was probably just as well for me.) Dessert was, sadly, a hot mess. It was fully buffet, but there was no clear order and while the crew was very good about keeping the food filled, I had to go hunting for dishware. Mom and I decided that I would go grab a plate for both of us while she went up to the lounge to get us some coffee.

It was fun trying all the different types of desserts! While we were enjoying them our friends from Connecticut joined us and convinced us to stay for Music Trivia. We had to name the artists for songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s – bonus points if someone from the team went to the dance floor and danced. Sadly, we were just hangers-on-ers, but our team came in second with 13 out of 15. But I knew almost all the songs and sang along with the best of them! It was a fun end to a great day.