Wine Tour Day 3 - Strasbourg Day 1

French motorways are great!! French inner city roads are a nightmare! After a breezy 3 hour journey from Epernay to Strasbourg punctuated only by the occasional grind of alloys on the kerbside as I attempted to get our passenger window close enough to the ticket dispenser at the Toll Booths (Peage), we arrived in Strasbourg and made our way to within 100 yards of our hotel. 40 minutes later we were still circling the same block trying to unlock the mysteries of The Labyrinth that is the Streets of Strasbourg. I suspect my final traffic violation count went up into double figures by the time we finally found a place to park. That first beer tasted very very good!!
But wow!! What a beautiful city Strasbourg Old Town is! Chock full of old Hansel and Gretel, timber-beamed houses and encircled by a charming river spanned by multiple, flower-festooned bridges. EVERYTHING is within walking distance from everything else and the place is buzzing with life. I LIKE Strasbourg.
One thing we learned quickly is that the streets are also teeming with bicycles, that weave perilously between the pedestrians at break-neck speeds, roundly ignoring the official cycle lanes and just clobbering along anywhere they please. Worth keeping eyes in the back of your head as a mistimed side step could put you right in the path of one of these deadly steeds and I suspect you would garner very little local sympathy. Avoiding getting run over by bikes, it seems, is very much your lookout.

Onto more regular topics - food and drink.
Being just on the German border Strasbourg is VERY Germanic in its place names, AND it’s food. If you’re not a fan of bread, potatoes and meat then there is plenty for you to eat. But if bread, potatoes and meat is your thing, Welcome to Heaven - pick up your wings and harp on the right and tuck in!!
A local speciality is a Tarte Flambee which is a very thin pizza that is pan fried and coated in a cheesy sauce with lardons of bacon. Very simple and extremely tasty. There are plenty of local cuisine establishments around called “Winstub” and along with beer in copious quantities they serve the tarte flambee, plus a wide array of meat based dishes with ribs, steak etc and a thing called Jambonneau which is a massive gammon/pork knuckle in a sauerkraut stew with potatoes. Not for the calorie-counters amongst you. Ooh... YES. :-)
Strasbourg at nighttime is equally teeming and the Cathedral lit up is a sight to behold. It must rank alongside Cologne as one of the most impressive gothic cathedrals in the world.
And finally our hotel, the courtyard of which looked like something straight out of Romeo and Juliet!!
As I said, apart from the bewildering traffic routes, I LIKE Strasbourg!!