Laura flew in on Saturday night and left on Tuesday morning, meaning that I had two full days (Sunday and Monday) to show her my wonderful home for the year!
Sundays in Strasbourg are not the best visiting days, to be honest, as it feels like the entire city shuts down. Also, it happened to rain all day last Sunday, making it hard to even just walk around and enjoy my beautiful city. However, we managed quite well!
First, I took Laura into the main city to see Notre Dame, Strasbourg's gorgeous gothic cathedral. Acting the tour guide, I spitted out random useful facts ("did you know that this cathedral was the tallest building in the world for over 200 years? Yeah, it was surpassed in height in the 1800s by a different cathedral"). We also paid five euro to climb to the top of Notre Dame's viewing platform. I had never been up there before, so it was an experience for me as well. Also, I've climbed a fair share of medieval cathedrals in my life--I have spiral staircase experience--yet I wasn't expecting the staircase to the top to be so open to the elements! The windows were huge and I felt more like we were climbing up a fancy spiraling balcony, but it gave us great views of the city as we steadily ascended.
At the top, we readied our umbrellas and took tons of pictures of the city below us. It was such a beautiful sight. I ran from one edge to the other, looking for recognizable landmarks ("look, there's Place Kleber! And over there is Petite France! My house is way off in the distance that way! And my university is somewhere in that direction!"). I love being so high up, it was awesome. Also, Laura pointed out that there are a lot of Russian soldiers' names engraved on one of the walls at the top of the cathedral, which I found fascinating. I still wonder why they are there...
After the cathedral, we spend a bit of time looking through the tourist shops to get out of the rain (of course all of these shops were open on a rainy Sunday, but none of my favorite cafés or patisseries were open!). Then, I took Laura to Flams for some traditional Alsatian cuisine! You just can't beat tarte flambées!
We spend a long time after lunch just wandering around the city. I showed her Place Kleber, which is one of my favorite parts of town to walk through. None of the huge stores were open, of course, but she did see the giant Christmas tree! It's been up for about two weeks now, and it is normally one of the largest (if not the largest) Christmas trees in the world, averaging about 30 meters high (approximately 100 feet).
The rain finally slowed to a light mist in the later part of the afternoon, so I took Laura to see Petite France. We arrived just before sunset, and were treated to some beautiful sights that I only half-managed to capture on my camera. Laura was also very happy, since she hasn't seen a sunset in weeks (the cons to living in London, I guess!).
Chilled from the drizzly day, the two of us returned back to my host parent's home right before dinner. It was a little challenging to eat together, since I was the only one in the house who knew both English and French, and was official translator. It gets tiring quite quickly. Also, not all statements are even worth translating, and others have no direct translations, so there were a few frustrating moments at dinner. Luckily, Laura is a pretty fast learner of languages (she peppered me with French questions throughout the weekend, and I loved sharing my second language!). And my host parents are a hilarious couple, really--especially since Raymond is almost always laughing--so dinner is usually a funny affair, even breaking language barriers.
What really surprised me is how having a visitor changes your perspective about your city. It's easy to get bored or jaded with things you see every day, but showing them to someone new to the city is close to rediscovering all the magical parts of the city (like the Cathedral--I pass it all the time, yet staring at the magnificent detail on it with Laura, I was seeing it all again). As soon as Laura arrived, she exclaimed how beautiful Strasbourg is, and she said something along the lines of how I was sort of living in a Fairytale. Especially my neighborhood, which reminded her of Hansel and Gretel houses (an interesting description; I've always thought of the neighborhood as being a variety of fruit-colored cupcake houses). Now that I think about it, though, Petite-France is really something straight out of a fairytale. All those pretty half-timbered houses... In fact, my whole city is a little magical. There you have it: I'm living the fairytale life over here in Strasbourg, and I'm not complaining one bit!
Another part of having a visitor? Facing some semi-difficult truths. I sort of ran out of touristy things in the city to show Laura, and she countered with the question: "Well, what do you do here for fun?" and I responded truthfully: "Well, I eat a lot."
(Café hopping is a wonderful major activity when I don't have classes, but the truth sounds very... gluttonous. I also walk around a lot, though, so that should counteract it, right? Right?).
So that wrapped up Sunday with Laura... Yet Monday was another fairytale in itself! Until the next post!
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| Place Kleber at night. See the giant Christmas tree? |
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