This is Hetty. She's a very talented painter and also a friend from my childhood. Hetty met a nice man from Strasbourg. They fell in love and now she visits him every Christmas in Strasbourg.
This is her boyfriend, Nicolas. He's from Strasbourg and both he and Hetty gave us a wonderful tour and slice of true life in Strasbourg. I think it's a pretty great life.
Strasbourg's famous cathedral was one of the stops on our tour. Nicolas lived directly across from the cathedral. More on that later.
The rivers and colorful buildings make it a very scenic Alsatian city.
They certainly do it up at Christmastime. Lots and lots of decorations- often a mix of natural things like branches, dried leaves, bark, dried fruits and also bright ribbons, paper or wooden stars, even stuffed animals.
To be REALLY local we went along with Nicolas, Hetty, Hetty's two sons and friends of Nicolas to see a professional hockey game. Strasbourg vs. Chamonix. I think. The concession stand served hotdogs on baguettes.
The highlight of the evening was a LOVELY dinner party with friends of Nicolas, who lived in this huge, rambling, gorgeous apartment on the "german side" of Strasbourg. The French side is the older, split-timbered side and the German side was mostly large, grand, stone buildings.
A big feature of these regular dinner parties is singing. When I heard this I panicked. I don't do karaoke and I'm just not a big singer in general. Nicolas and Hetty assured us that there was NO pressure and it would be super relaxed and fun. THey were right- no pressure, and tons of fun. The music director was a pop star in France in the 1980's. He was famous for this song called "Oh, Sophie". Now he produces music and is a generally super nice person. He brings his amp and microphone, his friends have a piano and computer and basically he pulls up the lyrics on the computer and plays the tune so one can sing along.
And pretty much EVERYBODY sang. And they were good.
A big feature of these regular dinner parties is singing. When I heard this I panicked. I don't do karaoke and I'm just not a big singer in general. Nicolas and Hetty assured us that there was NO pressure and it would be super relaxed and fun. THey were right- no pressure, and tons of fun. The music director was a pop star in France in the 1980's. He was famous for this song called "Oh, Sophie". Now he produces music and is a generally super nice person. He brings his amp and microphone, his friends have a piano and computer and basically he pulls up the lyrics on the computer and plays the tune so one can sing along.
And pretty much EVERYBODY sang. And they were good.
And they were funny.
We all had a blast.
And even Dave and I sang. After many many glasses of red wine of course. I'm sure that after we left the hosts were saying "man, those Americans sure do drink a lot". We did drink a lot. And we had a blast. Now I can say I sang with a French pop star.
The next day we looked out our window (in Nicolas' apt) to this view. Yep, that's THE famous cathedral in back, just standing there being beautiful. We were pleasantly awoken by the gorgeous chimes. I have never heard chimes at near ear level like that. It was quite powerful.
Dave and I decided to climb to the top or near top of the cathedral to get a view of the city below.
The next day we looked out our window (in Nicolas' apt) to this view. Yep, that's THE famous cathedral in back, just standing there being beautiful. We were pleasantly awoken by the gorgeous chimes. I have never heard chimes at near ear level like that. It was quite powerful.
Dave and I decided to climb to the top or near top of the cathedral to get a view of the city below.
The many stairs going up were a bit much after a wine-soaked evening before but the view was worth the effort.
It was a nice way to close our overnight in such a beautiful city. We felt so lucky to have had a very full, and genuine "insider" experience of the city.
