Strasbourg- Eating and Shopping

The most pretty place in Strasbourg is at its southwest corner called "Petite France". It looks like Colmar style but the half-timber houses are less colorful. Apart from "Petite France" and Cathedral square, other areas are more ordinary but abundant of small shops, large malls and good restaurants.   

PS: Try to color map with my last year Christmas gift- a set of wax crayon.

World Heritage site

Strasbourg's old town centre was classified a World Heritage site in 1988,  "the first time such an honour was placed on an entire city centre"-by Wikipedia. Honestly I am surprise about it. As the Strasbourg historical town center was not as impressive as many other historical cities I have been, such as Venice, Florence, Prague, Graz etc. The architectures in Strasbourg actually feel a bit messy in the way that the near modern builds do not match with some more interesting medieval buildings. I do not think a good city has to be totally stay medieval or some other consistent style. Cities are developing, just like human. However while the best architecture of one period were kept, the new built ones should merge in with a comfortable way, to make the entire city a beautiful large picture. In this case Colmar is doing better job. One of such example of not so well mixed architectures is the Cathedral area at Strasbourg center.

However the southwest corner called "Petite France" is really consistent in style and very pretty. It looks like Colmar in black and white colors in timber-houses. The role of colorful scene is done by flowers. At the beginning I found the name of "Petite France" very weird. It is in France, why "little France". The "little Venice" in Colmar makes much sense to me. Tim comes out with one possible explanation. Because Strasbourg has changed nationalities between Germany and France several times, maybe this name "little France" was from the German period. I would say its a very reasonable thought. And the fact is not far away although not due to its beauty according to Wikipedia, which says "The name Petite-France ("Little France") was not given for patriotic or architectural reasons. It comes from the "hospice of the syphilitic" (Hospice des Vérolés, in French), which was built in the late fifteenth century on this island, to cure persons with syphilis, then called Franzosenkrankheit ("French disease") in German."

Strasbourg is surrounding by water. At "Petite France", there is a "E" shape island inside the canal, for boats to upload and download stuffs parallelly, a bit like platforms in train station. Although I didn't see it in document, but I guess waterway shippings are very important for Strasbourg. I am very interesting in the historical museum, but unfortunately the day we planed to visit the museum was a religious holiday that even Museum closes.

Eating and shopping

Unlike in Colmar when we wandering endless without being bored, in Strasbourg we feel better to spend time on eating and shopping as it has much better resource. That is the advantage as a big city. By chance our hotel is right next to a Galleries Lafayette, which I didn't connect with its very loud Chinese name to begin with. We had a vey efficient shopping there. I know it is a bit weird to call shopping efficient. Obviously it is from a person who doesn't enjoy wandering type of shopping. We happily found that Lafayette has it is own brand and makes clothes in basic styles. So we bought male shirts, male t-shirts, male and female sweaters, three each with same cut but different colors. Then we walk to the suitcase part, picked up a small four-wheels Samsonite suitcase we are interested for a while, packed clothes in and go. That was so far my most satisfying shopping experience as I feel I don't need to buy many of these clothes in a few year. And it is good to find somewhere making simple and high quality basic clothes.

It is very easy to find good restaurant in Strasbourg. However, despite of the large numbers of restaurants, it is still strongly recommended to make reservation. As many of them only do one run during meal time. Meaning that they do not serve anymore once the tables are full for once. This is very nice when you have a reservation, because then you do not have the pressure that someone else are waiting for a table. I had this pressure often with good Chinese restaurant . Although I love both French and Chinese food, the atmosphere in Chinese restaurant  can't not compare with French restaurant  at all. In Chinese restaurant  the only purpose is eating rather than relaxing, so very often you were expected to leave once you finish eating.

One common thing between Chinese and French is probably that they eat everything, well many ingredients that other nations might not use. Such as duck. I am suprised that it is so unusual to find duck in Austrian, Germany and USA supermarkts. It is soooo tasty, much fatty than Chicken! I have enjoyed duck a lot during the stay in France. One interesting thing is some dishes look very similar in Strasbourg region and Germany, they tasted so much better in France. Well the only explanation is French people put more attention on food taste.

 

Another thing particularly interesting is that, many friends told us to buy seafood in Strasbourg because they are sooo cheap. We felt very surprised to hear that as Strasbourg is no where near sea. However the supermarket in Strasbourg indeed have a large selection of seafood!

As a surprise, I also found my favorite grapes in many supermarkets in Strasbourg: the type they used to make wine. Although Stuttgart also grows many of them, I never found them being sold in supermarket. They are so tasty, so why not sell them?  I am happy French people agree with me! And of course we bought a big bag and carry back all the way to Stuttgart.