A Day in France...

Yesterday we took our first real day trip to a brand-new place, Strasbourg France. This was the first trip to France for dh and dds #2&3 and it was a lot of fun. It was a beautiful day and only a 2-hour drive, so getting there was easy. Once we found parking in a mall garage, we started to explore Strasbourg on foot.

First thing, we found a great little Enligh-language bookstore, The Bookworm, which we'll have to visit again. Dh picked up some golden-oldies - some of his favorite scifi authors. These books were so old, actually, that the prices listed were in Francs. We could have spent more time in this little shop, but still had lots to see, so we made our purchases, asked some directions and set off to explore.

Winding our way towards Little Europe, we stopped at a sidewalk cafe at the base of Our Lady of Strasbourg Cathedral. We had a great lunch and some good French desserts before doing some shopping along the side streets. We entered the Cathedral and looked around - it's really quite lovely. The stained glass windows are beautiful and the carvings impressive. The most amazing part, for me at least, was the astronomical clock. Unfortunately, we weren't there to see the midday display, but maybe next time.

We bought tickets on a tram tour of Strasbourg, which was only 5 Euro for an hour tour. It gave us a nice history of the town as well as some lovely views of the city center. We got out and walked up to a scenic overlook at the covered bridges. Next time, we'll take the boat tour.

As much fun as we had exploring the city and window shopping, we all greatly enjoyed our visit to Cora afterwords. CORA is a chain of huge grocery (and more) stores. I wasn't sure we'd be able to find the store when we pulled off the highway exit, until we saw it and passed by the enormous building for some time before being able to enter. It's huge! There are restaurants inside, as well as a dry-cleaner, bakery, and photo studio - and much more.

We strolled through the electronics section, but given that we weren't absolutely certain the currency and plugs were the same as Frankfurt, we didn't buy anything. Plus, our trunk is small on the loaner BMW, and we knew we'd want to stock up. We did find "feet" for our furniture - to keep them from marking up our new parquet floors. We also found clothes, tools, and all kinds of household goods. Finally, though, we got to the grocery section - and it was everything we'd hoped for - we even found Oreos - something the girls had been searching for. We bought lots of cheese - although cheddar is still a hard one to find - some wine and lots of different kinds of frozen foods. The produce and meat is great in Frankfurt, but it was fun to have a wide selection of both new, unusual items and familiar, homestyle favorites to choose from. The girls want to go back regularly to stock up.

While the drive there took us south through Germany past dh's work and then west into France, we drove home by going north through France and then east, so even with the rain last evening, it was an interesting drive. The rural parts of Germany still looked nothing like "home" because rural didn't involve nearly as many cornfields as in Illinois, nor was it flat, as we were driving through a valley with moutains rising to our East. Driving home through France looked more like upstate NY, with rolling hills, corn fields and vineyards, as well as something that looked like tobacco to us. We'll have to pull out the map today and figure out exactly where we were - GPS is a wonderful invention, but it's sometimes like driving in the dark.

Anyway, it was a great day trip, a lot of fun, and we'll definitley want to go back - even if not just for groceries. :)