Day 4, 9 May - Strasbourg

Man, did we sleep in. I didn’t even open my eyes until 9am. It felt fantastic.

Of course, the weather sucked again this morning. It was lightly raining when we woke up, so I checked the weather for the next couple of days and we determined that our best course of action would be to stay local today, go to Lorraine tomorrow, and head south into the heart of Alsace on Friday. Since we did a fair bit of exploring yesterday, we decided to do something outside the heart of the city and tour the Kronenbourg brewery. I’ve only ever seen Kronenbourg signs here in Alsace since we got here the other day, so I thought it would be nice to try a beer I might otherwise not be exposed to. With the help of the hotel concierge, we booked a spot on the 1:00 English tour. We only needed to find a way to kill an hour. Another episode of “Heroes,” or go outside and possibly get wet…

Yesterday, while walking around in Petit France, we happened upon an art gallery that had in the window a painting that we instantly fell in love with. Of course, being the second Tuesday of May, the shop was closed (actually, all the stores were closed for a much nobler reason: V-E Day, or the day when Germany signed the articles of surrender to the Allies in 1945) so we resolved to come back when it was open and see about purchasing it. Well, thanks to the weather, today was that day. The gallery owner was very friendly and spoke some broken English and after not much consideration, we bought the painting and arranged for it to be shipped back home. By now, we had to get back to the hotel to pick up our car for the short jaunt to the Kronenbourg brewery.

Europe being the parking nightmare that it is, we had to do a couple of laps around the block to find a parking space, but we finally did and had a very good time on the brewery tour. Our guide was obviously not a native English speaking person, but he got his points across nonetheless, and was very entertaining in the process. I chuckled to myself every time he asked the rhetorical “What means that?” We were a bit put off by being lumped into a field trip of English teenage girls, but their chaperone admonished them well and they were very well behaved.

Once back to the hotel, the weather appeared as it might be finally improving for good, so we headed out to explore the parts of Petit France that we had missed yesterday (by way of a sandwich shop on Place Kleber for a late lunch). It was very picturesque, with its four canals that split the district into 3 small islands.

We wound up having dinner at a small pizzeria, basically because we were both hungry and caught a whiff from the kitchen and sat down at one of the outdoor tables. Again, I felt proud that we were able to order, eat, pay without a word of English changing hands.