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More than a month after my weekend trip to Strasbourg I'm finally getting around to publishing the blog in my efforts to catch up to my most recent trip to Italy and Northern Spain. By the way MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!! I hope that you've all had a great holiday!

I Can (Could) Feel the Christmas Magic!

Lisa Damico
2007-03-08 20:28:59

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they were eating a pastry I had been curious about (my French life really does revolve around pastries) and speaking English - turned out they were the Strasbourg English teaching assistants - small world. Dinner consisted of a Tarte Flambee (in French), Flammekueches (in German), basically a pizza on a very thin crust topped with white cheese, creme fraiche, onions, bacon and whatever else you wanted. Since the menu said it was allowed, we actually got to eat this with our fingers - the French eat almost everything with their fork and knife, and washed it down with some of the house-brewed Christmas beer.

As I had a Sunday night train back to Chartres, Rachel and I had a day to kill in Strasbourg. Made some Christmas present purchases at the market in front of the Cathedral then went to visit Petite France located beside the river. Then began a ridiculously long trek (we actually went through someone's backyard) to find the EU Parliament and Council builidngs - just because you can see where a building is doesn't mean you can get to it . . . saw what there was to see of the outside then went to the Orangerie Park to amuse ourselves for the rest of the day. The highlight of this park visit would have to be the little zoo they had there. Lots of children and parents were gathered around the cages to watch the monkeys, goats and birds just like one would anywhere else in the world. Things continued like this until I got to
the peacock cage where we stayed for quite awhile because I wanted a good, closeup photo of the peacocks. During my time at the peacock cage, not one but numerous adults upon seeing the peacocks began to say loudly "Balerio balerio" to the peacocks. At first I thought maybe that's the word for peacock in French, but no peacock is le paon, maybe peacocks make a noise that to the French sounds like "Balerio" (for example, in French a rooster says "cocorico" not cock-a-doodle-do), but no everything I've ever heard about peacocks was they make an awful screaming noise and cooing "balerio balerio" doesn't not sound like screaming . . . So Rachel and I were very entertained for the duration of our stay at the peacock cage - although due to all the balerio-ing I was unable to get a good photo.

Strasbourg weekend thus came to a close, we did end up on a train car on the way back with no heat - was definitely not feeling the Christmas magic then - although a conductor came through 2 hours later and told us we could move to another car, so I ate some bredala Christmas cookies and felt better.

Ok that's one travel blog down, two more to go (Normandie and Italy/Spain). Since there's the Christmas theme running through this one, I'll thank you for all the presents and cards I got, the guys at the post office now know me because of all the times I was standing in line to pick up packages (I'm greeted with a Bonjour madamoiselle everytime I walk in now). I miss you all so much and hope you're all doing well. Stay in touch!

Love,
Me

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