France with a German Accent

We were amazed by the beauty of this city. The public buildings downtown are stately and imposing. The architecture is similar to that in Paris, but with a distinctly Germanic/Austrian accent. You absolutely must visit the cathedral, which is in the ancient center of the town. The town is small and you can easily see everything in two days, relying on public transportation and your feet to get around.

The tourist office in the train station is very helpful. They speak English. We asked one woman there for directions from the train station to our hotel, using the tram, and she not only gave us a map, but wrote down directions to the tram stop near the station and the name of the station where we should get off. The tourist office's free map is not very good (there is no street index) but our hotel provided an excellent free map.

Eat a kugelhopf. It is a brioche-like pastry studded with raisins and topped with almonds and powdered sugar. A great breakfast or snack. (You can also get them with onions and bacon, but those aren't traditional.)

Quick Tips:

La Petite France is a major tourist attraction. Unfortunately this means crowded streets and tacky souvenir stores. It is worth a walk-through to see the lovely half-timbered buildings built along a canal. Tour boats go along the canal, and there is a small lock in the canal at the edge of La Petite France that is fun to watch working.

As you travel around, keep an eye out for the unusual and very modern sculptures all around the town.

Best Way To Get Around:

The tram/metro system is very modern, fast and convenient. Although there is also a public bus system, the trams got us everywhere we wanted to go and ran frequently. Tickets are 6FF each (about .80), but you can buy an unlimited pass good for 24 hours for 20FF (about .75) or a family pass (minimum 1 adult and 1 child) for 25FF (about .40). The town center is small enough to cover easily on foot.

This Holiday Inn is on the edge of the town''s center, but it is just across the street from the Lycee Kleber tram stop, so it is very easy to get there from the train station, and easy to go anywhere in the city center. The people at the front desk speak fluent English and never failed to greet us as we came and went throughout the day. They gave us an excellent free map of the city. A bowl of fresh fruit and a bowl of hard candy was on the front desk for the taking.

Our room was spacious and was on a non-smoking floor. We were not bothered by smoke coming from other floors or from the bedding. The room had a king-size bed, mini-bar, hair dryer and pants press. A television had CNN-International, along with programs in a variety of languages. The bathroom was large, especially by European standards, but the towels were thin. There was parking available, and the hotel had a restaurant. A buffet breakfast is available, but we preferred to grab a kugelhopf from Maison Kugelhopf, a great pastry shop downtown. I would have no hesitation to stay here again if we return to Strasbourg.

Au Crocodile is one of Strasbourg's two Michelin three-star restaurants. My husband and I had not been impressed with the cuisine of Strasbourg up to that point, so when we went there for lunch, we were hoping for the best of what Strasbourg had to offer.

From beginning to end, it was an unpleasant experience. At other three-star restaurants, we have ben greeted warmly and treated as if we here guests in someone's home. The greeting at Au Crocodile was chilly. Please note that we were nicely dressed (silk blouse and pearls for me, coat and tie for my husband) and I speak enough French to get by just fine in a restaurant. Along with a table of nicely dressed Japanese ladies, we were seated at the very back of the dining room, at the entrance to the kitchen, even though there were other, better located tables that remained vacant through the entire lunch service. We each ordered a glass of champagne to start while we studied the menu. We each ordered the fixed-price menu. This menu offered a wine-pairing -- an appropriate glass of wine for each course. The waiter turned his nose up when my husband ordered this option and I said I was not having wine. His nose got even higher in the air when I asked for tap water instead of bottled. (Now, this was not only normal but done by many apparent locals in the dining room.)

We were served an amuse bouche of two very clashing flavors: a small cup of sweet melon soup and a cherry tomato stuffed with strong goat cheese. Frankly, I do not even remember the appetizer. (I wrote this journal from notes, then threw out the notes. Then, the journal mysteriously disappeared from IgoUgo.) The main course for both of us was blanquette of veal, normally a delicate white-sauced veal stew. It was bland and gluey, reminiscent of cafeteria food. The desserts were literally inedible. My husband had what was supposed to be a mocha cake. It tasted only of very bitter coffee. After one bite, he was done. I ordered rhubarb gratin with strawberries. The rhubarb was a gray-green mush with a few slices of strawberries for garnish. The whole thing was too tart to eat. I, too, took only one bite and pushed it away. We did not stay for coffee.

Service throughout the meal was without graciousness or grace. Dishes were plopped on the table without the traditional announcement of what they were. No one seemed to care that we were eating little of what was served, though at a restaurant of Au Crocodile's purported quality, the servers should have been quite concerned. A three-star restaurant is supposed to offer the best of atmosphere, service and cuisine. Au Crocodile failed in all three categories. We've had better food and service at no-star bistros all over France for a fraction of the price.

We had just arrived in Strasbourg, it was a Sunday night, and nothing was open except the touristy places around the cathedral. We chose the very touristy Maison Kammerzell because it is known for its choucroute garni, a local dish consisting of sauerkraut with smoked meats and sausage. We walked in without a reservation and were taken to the third floor of this historic building and seated in a cramped little room with a low ceiling. It was a very hot night and (of course) there was no air-conditioning. The one window provided little ventilation. We noticed that one floor below, where people with reservations were seated, the rooms were more spacious with ceiling fans and more windows.

They offered several fixed-price menus, which are usually a better deal than the a la cart selections. Here, however, we were able to put together a nice meal of our choosing for less money than the fixed-price menu, including the same main course offered on the fixed-price choice. We started with an ordinary salad, with a nondescript vinaigrette, but it was a good starter for a hot day. The chef is proud of having created a choucroute garni featuring fish, so we ordered that, as much out of curiousity as hunger. Mistake. Fish and sauerkraut just do not go together. We were presented with a mound of sauerkraut (just like the kind that comes in jars at home) topped with a hunk of very salty smoked whitefish, a piece of bland poached salmon and a piece of bland poached white fish, perhaps sole. All this was topped with a white sauce. The white fish and salmon weren't bad, but they weren't all that good either.

After glancing at the desserts at the tables around us, we decided to look for ice cream out on the street. We did order coffee. Where I have had no trouble getting excellent brewed-to-order decaf all through France, I strongly suspect that my decaf here was instant. And, in the home of espress-strength coffee, it was very watery. Ah, I guess that's a problem of a tourist-oriented restaurant. My recommendation is to admire the outside of this historic building but eat elsewhere.

The real name of this little winestub (Strasbourg-style bistro) is S'Burjerstuewel -- no wonder everyone calls it Chez Yvonne. After a less-than-satisfying meal at Maison Kammerzell the previous night, we thought we'd try a traditional winestub. We were guided to Chez Yvonne by a favorable review in Bon Appetit. I guess we just don't like Strasbourg cuisine, because we weren't very happy here either.

I started with pot au feu with salad, expecting a creative take on this boiled beef dish --perhaps a cold dish that would complement the salad and suit the warm weather. Nope. It was just as it said -- salty boiled beef with salad. My husband was also disappointed with his salty, but otherwise unseasoned boring oxtail appetizer. I had duck breast as my main course. It was done just right, but had no seasoning or adornment. The mashed potatoes accompanying it were okay, but nothing special. My husband ordered quail stuffed with foie gras. Strasbourg is as well-known for foie gras as the Perigord region. Unfortunately, the so-called foie gras stuffing tasted more like liverwurst and the quail had an odd vinegary taste. For dessert, I had a very tart lemon sorbet, which I liked a lot, and my husband had an excellent gateau du fromage, a fluffy Alsacian cheescake.

There were a lot of young locals here, and they ate very quickly. No one seemed shy about ordering just a main dish instead of a full meal. If you're looking for easy, plain food, then there is nothing wrong with Chez Yvonne. If you want something more than a casual Alsacian diner, then this is not the place you are looking for.

As you look in the windows of this tea salon and pastry shop, try not to drool too much. The pastries and chocolates look so perfect you might think they are not real. They are, and, unlike a lot of pastries, they taste as good as they look. After a day of hiking around Strasbourg, we stopped for an afternoon snack in the tea salon. After ordering our beverage of choice (hint -- they make a killer hot chocolate), we went into the pastry shop and picked out what we wanted. The server plated it up and brought it to us. I had a wonderful multi-layer chocolate cake with a hint of raspberry. At the table next to us two "ladies of a certain age" (as they say in France) were engaged in a heated discussion with the server about the merits of the various flavors of house-made sorbets and ice creams. They each chose three flavors, and shortly were each presented with a beautiful tulip-shaped glass filled with their choices, topped with whipped cream and a mint sprig. This was a relaxing break in the day, and we left ready to pound the pavement some more. If you, too, want to experience the sorbets and ice creams, there is a little ice cream stand right outside the entrance. Among the 10 or more flavors were rhubarb, wild strawberry, melon and black currant. You can also pick up something from the pastry shop to take along with you. A midnight snack back at the hotel, perhaps?

Considered one of the world's finest examples of High Gothic architecture, it is the centerpiece of the city. Until the 19th century, its spire was the highest in the Western world. The cathedral is constructed of pink sandstone, built between the 12th and 15th centuries. When we visited, extensive renovations were being done to the nave and you could not go up into the observation platform on the spire. Some of the stained glass windows date back to the late 12th century; the oldest ones have only one figure and the "newer" ones are the story-windows common to cathedrals throughout Europe. During the war, the windows were carefully removed and taken to a place of safekeeping. The astronomical clock should not be missed. It was built in the mid-1800's as a replica of the original 14th century clock. At 12:30 every day, it puts on a magnificent display of performing angels and parading apostles. Even if the clock is not putting on its show, it is still a wonder.