Chapter Twelve: Inside Paris City Hall & A Sea of Sculptures
February 28, 2025
Chapter Fourteen: A Leisurely Day In Strasbourg
April 12, 2025Mai Tai Tom Stays On Track Through Belgium, Paris and Strasbourg
Chapter Thirteen: Cruising Strasbourg
Day Thirteen: Gorgeous Hotel, Attack Of The Vikings, On A Carrousel, A Quick Trip To Church, Napoleon Slept Here, Striking The Right Corde, Underneath The Sycamore Tree, Schweitzer & Mozart Duet, Watch Out For The Bike, Ambiancing, Got Your Bridges Covered, Stuebeling In, That’s A lot Of Sour Cream and Beauté Nocturne de Petite France
To paraphrase Willie Nelson, we were back on the tracks again, this time to Strasbourg in the Alsace region of France. However, it hasn’t always been a part of France. In 1681, it became a French city, but after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 it became a German city, but was returned to France in 1918 at the end of World War I thanks to the Treaty of Versailles. But wait, there’s more.
Since Hitler thought he could take whatever he wanted (sound familiar?), Strasbourg and the rest of the Alsace region became a de facto member of the Greater German Reich. Strasbourg was liberated in 1944, and in 1945 it and and the Alsace region were returned to France, although its Germanic influences can be seen throughout the area.
Hopping in a taxi at the Strasbourg railway station, we were quickly deposited at what would become our favorite hotel of the trip, Le Bouclier d’Or, located in the charming Petite France section of town.
The staff was attentive, helpful and friendly all four days we stayed here, and the interior was very welcoming as was its patio.
It also had a spot where we would spend a few nights reminiscing about our days’ activities. Santé!
Walking toward the nearby cathedral, we spied hordes of people on the same path. We quickly maneuvered onto an adjacent street, narrowly averting being trampled by what we called “The Vikings” (aka the Viking cruise line people). It would not be our last encounter with these marauding tourists.
Safely at Place Gutenberg, we admired the Carrousel de la Place Gutenberg which has been here for more than three decades.
Unsurprisingly, the below 1840 statue is of the famous printer himself, Johannes Gutenberg. On our travels, we’ve seen quite a few of his bibles, because, just like his print, we are the movable type. He holds a parchment that is inscribed with the words. “Et la lumière fut” (“And behold, there was light”).
In this area of town, the streets were relatively quiet as we gazed at Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg.
Before entering the Cathédrale we happened upon the exterior of Maison Kammerzell located at Place de la Cathédrale. The 15th century dwelling was named after a grocer who owned it in the 19th century.
Back at the cathedral, there was no line (foreshadowing alert), and mass was in session. 
We snapped a few photos, and because it was the last day of Journées du Patrimoine, we decided to return the following day since it’s free to visit every day.
On the cathedral’s North Portal façade is a mascaron that represents a griffin, whose name I assumed was Merv. The mascaron’s job was to frighten evil spirits from entering the building. We’re not that easy to scare.
From all angles, the cathedral is impressive. The tower (462 feet), finished in the late 1430s, is the largest from medieval times.
In fact, it was “the highest edifice in all Christianity until the 19th century.”
Nearby, we entered the courtyard of Le Palais Rohan, the former Episcopal residence of the Bishop of Strasbourg, constructed in the 1730s. The palace was designed to be in the style of the great Parisian mansions (such as the Palace of Versailles), and is actually three museums in one (Decorative Arts, Fine Arts and Archeology).
We took a self-guided tour of the lavish state apartments that were built for the prince-bishops and cardinals of the House of Rohan. The first room was Synod Hall, which was the palace’s reception area.
Palais Rohan had quite the guest list through the years including Louis XV, Marie Antoinette, Charles X, along with Napoleon and Joséphine. Louis XV stayed in the King’s Bedchamber in 1744, and Marie Antoinette slept here in 1770.
The next stop was the ornate Bishop’s Room, which doubled as a Gaming Room.
Until 1793, portraits of the bishops adorned the walls but, not knowing it would become a tourist attraction until centuries later, revolutionaries demolished them. The walls are now decorated with “allegories of civic virtue.”
The apartments are part of the larger Decorative Arts museum, or at least that’s what we perceived.
The last room in the Royal Suite is the Bibliothèque. The prince-bishops had an affinity for books, which lined the mahogany shelves.
These tapestries by Rubens and Italian artist Pietro portray the “History of Constantine Series.” In the middle of the two tapestries are paintings of Louis XIV and Louis XV, which I dubbed the “Louis Louis Series.”
We left here before we were bust-ed.
The library led into a small chapel with a 1724 copy of Italian painter Antonio da Correggio’s 16th-century Nativity.
Emperor Napoleon’s bedchamber was next on the royal agenda.
Before it became Napoleon’s bedchamber in 1805, it served as a study.
What was once the Prince-Bishop’s Bedchamber became Napoleon’s Morning Room.
The cabinet was made specifically for him.
The last room in the royal apartments was the Antechamber of the Prince-Bishop.
On the left is an 18th-century cocklestove, which was (and I guess still is) a masonry stove that heats an interior space. On the right, my best guess is a pagoda.
We skipped the Martha Stewart collection of plates and glassware, and, like The Jeffersons, we were movin’ on up to the Fine Arts portion of the Museum, where we would admire paintings ranging from the 14th to 19th centuries. Hans Memling’s Polyptych of Earthly vanities and Heavenly redemption put me in Bosch-mode for a minute.
The Virgin and Child, aka Pazzi Madonna, by Donatello is a painted Terracotta relief.
There were works by Raphael and Giroromo Della Dellarobbia (Head of an Apostle), among many other famous artists.
El Greco’s Virgin stood out.
One of my favorite paintings in the Fine Arts portion of the museum was the 16th century painting Paradise on Earth, by Austrian artist Hans Bocksberger. It “depicts a scene from the Old Testament with God, Adam and Eve, angels and a rich nature with various plants and animals.”
Speaking of animals, we ran into Rubens’ St. Francis of Assisi, who was looking a tad sheepish.
Tracy didn’t need to be in a garden or flower shop to have her fill of lovely flowers. She thought they were blooming beautiful.
French painter Nicolas de Largillière’s 1703 La Belle Strasbourgeoise (The Beautiful Strasbourg Woman) is said to actually be a portrait of the artist’s sister.
Antoine-Louis Barye was a renowned Romantic French sculptor who loved to sculpt animals (aka “animalier). Since I like a good story, this statue is called Roger and Angelica Mounted on the Hippogriff. So the tale goes, “This bronze depicts a scene from Orlando Furioso, a chivalric epic from the Italian Renaissance that inspired artists well into the 19th century. In it, Roger, a knight, rides a hippogriff (a hybrid of a horse and an eagle, with the front half resembling an eagle and the hind half a horse) to save Princess Angelica, who has been chained to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster. Antoine Louis Barye captured the moment the heroes take flight, leaving behind the defeated monster with waves lapping around it.”
Tracy enjoyed the Fine Arts Museum because, besides the wonderful paintings, the wall colors “really made them pop off the wall.”
We decided to skip the archaeology portion of Palais Rohan, because we always try to adhere to philosopher Meat Loaf’s adage that “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”
Kim and Mary bid us au revoir for the remainder of the day (hope it wasn’t something I said), and Tracy decided to take a photo of me walking down the stairs for insurance purposes.
We walked back toward Petite France …
… and found a restaurant I wanted to try thanks to a friend of mine on the Fodor’s Travel Board.
We plopped down at the last available seat on the patio of La Corde à Linge. As stated on its website, “It’s in a unique setting, inspired by the world of haberdasheries and laundries of the early 20th century, that guests come to enjoy homemade Alsatian cuisine.” La Corde à Linge in English means “clothesline,” so Tracy and I thought it would be a good place to hang.
We ordered two Kir Royales Cremant d’Alsace. After a couple of sips, suddenly neither one of us had a kir in the world.
My first attempt at Alsatian cuisine was a delicious one. What’s not to like about Spaetzle? Traditional Alsatian pasta complete with cheese, bacon, onions and croutons, and this boy could have eaten two helpings (maybe three).
We were happy campers.
Charming Strasbourg had already sucked me in, so we meandered a bit, trying to do our best impression of ambiancing. Petite France is also called Quartier des Tanneurs. Before it was a tourist destination, this area was a working class neighborhood of tanneries. You can see the Germanic influences with the half-timbered buildings.
On the left is the Maison des Tanneurs, According to its website: “Here, they carried out “river work,” which consisted of meticulously cleaning their hides so that they could absorb the tannin and achieve the suppleness necessary for the other tanning operations. They then dried them in these granaries, whose sloping roofs let the air through.” Today it’s a restaurant.
Speaking of restaurants, there was the next evening’s dinner spot dead ahead. The name was enough to make me cry.
It was rather peaceful on a Sunday afternoon. I wondered where all the tourists had gone.
Oh wait, here’s some now.
We glanced back at La Corde à Linge and people relaxing under the large Sycamore tree that shades virtually the entire patio.
People were relaxing everywhere.
Tracy was enamored with these clever holiday decorations, old books painted to resemble cheery red mushrooms. Tracy tells me that mushroom ornaments were very popular last year for Christmas decor in the States. I was not as impressed, and Tracy said sometimes I should be more of a fungi.
We circled back and stopped inside Église Saint-Thomas, one of the few Protestant churches we’ve visited on our many trips abroad. The front of the church dates to the 13th century.
We ventured inside.
There are some pretty cool highlights. One is the Mausoleum of 18th century French general Marshal de Saxe. He became a Marshal of France after his heroics in the mid-18th century War of the Austrian Succession.
King Louis XV ordered Jean-Baptiste Pigalle to sculpt a monument to de Saxe in the apse of St. Thomas after de Saxe’s death in 1750. de Saxe’s remains were finally interred here in 1777. I wondered what it all meant, and when that happens I turn to my good buddy Wikipedia. The monument “shows Death holding a sandglass and calling him to the grave while a crying France tries to retain him, and Hercules weeps on the tomb’s side. To the left are France’s enemies personified by three distraught animals: the German eagle, the Dutch lion, and the British lion, and their broken flags, while to the right are France’s triumphant standards. In the middle stands the heroic marshal holding his baton, unfazed by his fate.”
This organ with all those pipes tell a story as well.
The grand organ dates back to 1740, and is the work of famed organ maker J.A Silbermann. Even more famous are the people who played it, including Mozart in 1778 and Albert Schweitzer in 1909 while commemorating the anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach. This is the original keyboard played by them both. (Schweitzer also designed the choir’s organ that same year.)
A copy of a letter from Mozart to his father …
… where he describes his Strasbourg experience is framed on one of the doors of the console.
We also viewed the sarcophagus of Bishop Adeloch (786-823 AD), the founder of the church and the first Bishop of Strasbourg. You thought riding a hippogriff was difficult. How about a guy riding a fish on the far left? Holy mackerel!
This is the tombstone of the decayed corpse of Nikolaus Roeder von Tiersburg from the early 16th century. It prompted Tracy to remark that if I don’t exercise more I might look like this soon. I guess I better eat more Spaetzle.
On the right is the funerary slab of Colonel Frédéric Louis Kanofski von Langendorf from the 17th century.
That was it for St. Thomas, and that was it for Tracy, Kim and Mary. So, as the other three intrepid travelers took a well-deserved respite, I took a walk around town which was bustling a little more.
That was it for St. Thomas, and that was it for Tracy and Mary. So, as our better halves took a well-deserved respite, Kim and I took a walk around town which was bustling a little more.
We stopped by Place Kleber, one of Strasburg’s largest squares, considered by many to be the heart of the city. The statue is of General Jean Baptiste Kléber, who served in Napoleon’s army during the Egypt campaign in the late 18th century. He was assassinated in Cairo in 1800, and the statue was erected nearly four decades later. In a few minutes, it would be the scene of a bicycle mishap.
As you can see in the below picture, people congregated at Place Kleber, and on this afternoon lots of families with children walked leisurely, enjoying a lovely afternoon. About 25-30 feet ahead of us a woman was strolling with her three children on the square when out of the blue a bicycle rapidly approached them. The mother never saw the bicyclist (she had three kids in tow), as he rode toward them, never changing direction. At the last minute, he slammed on his brakes, but he still ran into two of the kids, not so hard as to injure them, but enough to shake them (and mom) up. 
In a perfect world, the bicyclist would have gotten off his bike, apologized and checked to see how the kids were doing. However, in a bicyclist’s world, in my opinion, events like this are seen in a completely different light. It’s never their fault. As mom tried to console the kids, he gave them a look of disdain, and shaking his head at them like it was entirely their fault for walking on a public square and not avoiding a speeding bicyclist who obviously was not paying attention to his surroundings,
This anecdote notwithstanding, for the most part Strasbourg had the most courteous bicyclists of any city we visited on the trip.
A little while afterward, as we walked back by our hotel, Kim decided he would take a load off, as well. So I set off on my own, and saw old St. Thomas peeking around the corner.
I love unique restaurant signs. She looked a little like Carol Channing.
Nearing the end of Petite France on the other side of the canal is the Pont Couverts (Covered Bridges) with those large towers. Although the wooden roof that used to cover the bridges is gone, they have kept the moniker.
Next I took some time checking out the 17th-century Barrage Vauban (Great Lock). Had I been thinking properly I would have gone up to the walkway on top for a gander view of Petite France.
Strasbourg was the gift that kept on giving with photogenic spots wherever I walked.
This building was a reminder that thousands of people converge here each holiday season on the Christmas markets.
Returning to the hotel just in time to shower and to meet up for a walk to our dining spot for the evening, Fink’Steubel.
The interior oozed coziness and a tiny kitchen. We were ready for another traditional Alsatian meal.
The food arrived, and it looked great,
This time I got lost in translation, but let’s start with Kim, who had very tasty ribs with various salads and fried potatoes.
Mary ordered a chicken dish while Tracy enjoyed chicken and mushrooms in a puff pastry with cream sauce.
And then there was me. I ordered something with a vat of sour cream and a small side of ham and potatoes. It was not what I expected, but I tried my best. Obviously, I screwed up on how to eat it, but I did steal some of Kim’s fried potatoes.
Despite my error in ordering (I noticed there was my favorite steak tartare after I ordered), the food was good, and although there was really only one guy serving, the service was prompt, friendly and professional. Plus, I liked that little window into the kitchen.
Although we missed the Blue Hour, back in Petite France it was still a glorious night.
Very near our hotel St. Thomas (the church would play a part in our trip a couple of times later) glowed in a purple light.
Returning to our hotel, another glow alerted us that the bar was open. Kim and Mary declined and headed off to bed, we saw the bar was open, and celebrated our first day in Strasbourg.
The following morning we’d start at the Cathedral, where the Vikings made it almost impossible to get a glimpse of L’Horloge Astronomique inside the church, but we gave it a shot. It was a rainy day in Strasbourg, so we ducked inside a restaurant our hotel recommended, and walked around enjoying a leisurely day in Strasbourg.
The palace we wanted to visit was closed, although every website said it was open, and when the deluge hit, we found a port in the storm. We had a fantastic meal at a really fun restaurant, and regrouped as the vacation was nearing its end.
Next: Chapter Fourteen: A Leisurely Day In Strasbourg
Day Fourteen: Give Me Some Belly Rubs, The Crush At The Clock, Mary’s Encounter With The Vikings, Say Oncle, Walking In The Rain, No Palace For You, Romanesque Revival, Kir Revival, This Is More Like It and a Red Hot Finish
