Day 181: South to Strasbourg

Short stay in a small country, time to move on! We had pre-booked tickets for the train to Strasbourg from Luxembourg at 11:20, so we checked out and walked down to the station in plenty of time. While waiting, I noticed on the board it had some comment that I didn't quite understand - when I ran it through the translator app I realised it meant "train cancelled". Whoops.

So I spoke with a station helper, and he said to get on the train to Metz (leaving in 10 minutes), then change trains at Metz for the service to Strasbourg. A bit longer, and two trains instead of one, but at least it wasn't going to be a huge drama.

So we hopped on the Metz train and pretty soon it pulled out of the station. Not much to report from this leg, just the typical train journey through Luxembourg and then northern France. Lots of fields and farmland, very green. Slow train service though, with lots of minor stops at some platforms that didn't even have concrete pavers! Just gravel and weeds.

Arrived in Metz where the Strasbourg train was waiting on the opposite side of the platform; running about 20 minutes late though I guess it had been waiting for our train to arrive. I'd say half of the people from our train hopped on! Thankfully we had reserved seats so no problem there, and we were soon on our way.

This was a high-speed TGV service, not the usual TER local trains we'd been getting, and before long it was blasting across the countryside at over 300km/h! It was about a 50 minute hop to Strasbourg through nicely rolling fields, and one extremely long tunnel. We were going so fast through the tunnel my ears were popping, and I noticed everyone else clearing their ears when we zoomed back out into the sunshine.

The train slowed out of hyperspeed long enough for us to hop out at Strasbourg before continuing along to Lille on France's southern coast. It was only about 10 minutes walk from the train station to our Airbnb for the week, but despite the delay we were still quite early. We walked about half the distance in the hot sun before retreating to a cafe and having a beer!

Time to check in at 2pm, so we walked the rest of the way and found our apartment. It's right on the main shopping street, above a noisy pub, but thankfully at the back of the building so relatively quiet. Very old building, I'm not sure how old but the staircase is a stone spiral and still has iron loops and a central channel for the rope handrail! Apartment is fairly large, and we'll be pretty comfortable here for the week I think. The only drawback is no air conditioning, and it's quite warm here - around 28/29 degrees, probably the warmest weather we've had since leaving Australia.

We settled in, caught up on Game of Thrones and Last Week Tonight, then ventured out into the city. Strasbourg is a very old city, pre-dating Roman occupation. The central core is a small island in a river known creatively as Ile-de-Cite, where most of the buildings are very old. What's also interesting is that because we're so close to the German border (it's literally about 20km away), the city has flipped back and forth between French and German control for the last few hundred years and the culture is quite a blend.

Most of the restaurants serve things like schnitzel with boiled potatoes or sauerkraut with sausages, though of course there are French flags everywhere and French is the spoken language. And of course the whole area is a world heritage site, along with the area just north of the river which was developed by the Germans during their occupation in the 19th century.

We had a small look around, though we weren't in any hurry to film as we've got an entire week here. In the end we decided to grab dinner from the pub downstairs since it had pretty good reviews. I had a pork dish with Alsation potato dumplings and gravy, while Shandos had a tarte flambee, essentially a local style pizza with creme fraiche instead of tomato sauce and topped with onion and bacon. Delicious!Read more