A Gastronomical Weekend

An early Friday morning train took me to Strasbourg to meet Allie for the weekend! We came into the weekend with an agenda that was based on consuming all of the Alsace specialties (as decided by wiki). Based on our *slight* obsession with food I'm sure none of you are surprised that all of our tasks were completed with ease ;)

Our first lunch was the ever famous tartes flambé. The original tartes flambé is like a wafer thin and crispy pizza with onion, cream sauce, and bacon. Both this and the apple based dessert tartes were delicious! Dinner was composed of a vegetable and a niçoise quiche and a dessert of chocolate and caramel flan, strawberries, and whipped cream -- hopefully this will be more interesting when there are some visuals to match the descriptions. Aside from our meals, the day was spent wandering around the town, seeing cathedral, and looking in every boulangerie and pâtisserie in the city. Allie taught me a very important French phrase: je regarde seulement - I'm just looking.

Day two in Strasbourg began with a breakfast of a nutella croissant and a capuccino at a pâtisserie. Following this was a tour of Kronenbourg Brasseries, a Strasbourg based beer. I learned some interesting European beer

history thanks to my designated translator. Lunch included an appetizer of fois gras (as rich and creamy as I imagined) and main course of choucroute. This is another traditional dish consisting of a mound of sauerkraut and lots and lots of meat. While it was good, the shear amount of meat would deter me from ever ordering it again.

After lunch we decided to take advantage of the fact that Strasborg is very close to Germany. We took a nice walk through Strasbourg University's ghost town of a campus to a beautiful bridge that led over the Rhine and into Germany. I may have put one toe (ok, maybe a bit more than that...) into Germany! There was an extreme lack of border control and I had no trouble returning to France :)

After venturing back to the "legal" side, we has an in hostel picnic before venturing out in the cold rain for ice cream sundaes.

Our Sunday actually included a bit of culture (other than food, that is) with a trip to the modern

art museum! This trip did only last about half the length of our lunch, though :) Our last lunch was made up of beef carpaccio and Baeckeoff, a triple meat, potato, and carrot stew. This was delicious and the perfect lunch for such a cold and rainy day.

Note - mid and northern France in the summer is cold. No one warned me about this and I am very jealous of the 100+ weather you guys are enjoying at home.

After a bit more wandering, Allie left to go back to Germany and I had a a quick donar kebob and

a McFlurry. Yes I did say McFlurry. They're actually suprisingly good outside the US! Tomorrow headed back to Paris to meet Mom and begin the family vacation!