Rick Steves sums up the Alsace region of France perfectly. It's a small region in the northeastern part of France that has gone between being part of France and being part of Germany many times. It is now a part of France but you can definitely see the German influence, and we heard that if you cross from Alsace into Germany you can't tell the difference because the architecture and the food are almost the exact same. We began our excursion in Alsace at 6:30am last Friday morning which was much earlier than any of us wanted to be awake, so we all slept or attempted to sleep pretty much the entire bus ride to Strasbourg. You might recognize the name Strasbourg, and if you do it's because it is one of the capitals of the European Union - Brussels and Luxembourg being the other two. The reason we had to leave Dijon so early was because we had to get to Strasbourg in time for a tour of the European Union Parliament.
Seeing the European Parliament was really cool, but the tour was just laughable because our tour guide treated us like we were 5 year olds who could barely speak French. For example, with numbers he would say "Here's a fact for you to practice numbers...there are seven hundred....and...thirty....six European members of Parliament. Ok there are 736 members of Parliament." Obviously this was all in French, but it was ridiculous and he would repeat himself a million times. I think he told us that the European Parliament was in a semi-circle maybe 10 times in the timespan of 2-3 minutes. Anyways so you get the picture, it was a bit ridiculous but I still did learn some things. Strasbourg is where the normal everyday decisions of the EU get made because they are required to be in Strasbourg at least one week out of every month. Also it is in Strasbourg where the Committees are, and each member of Parliament is required 
to be on a committee. We also learned that the reason the EU building appears unfinished (which you can see up to the right) is because the EU isn't finished and they still have the ability to add more states and expand the abilities of the EU. At the end of our tour we received booklets on the EU and we also got posters for free, so that was pretty great! After the EU we then spent the rest of the day in Strasbourg which is such a cute city, and what made it even better was the fact that we had beautiful blue skies and upper 70 degree weather! Strasbourg is divided by a the Ill river, and is such a beautiful city with the German-style architechture
which you can see to your right! We took a river cruise which was really cool because we got to see the whole city and all the important landmarks from the river and we also had headsets with audio guides to learn a little bit about the history. After the river tour we went to the Notre Dame of Strasbourg, at this point I think every main city in this country has a Notre Dame because I have seen so many different Notre Dame cathedrals. I thought the one in Strasbourg was even prettier than the one in Paris. It isn't necessarily prettier from the outside, but on this inside it is breathtaking. It had 
beautiful stain-glassed windows which you can see to the left. These stain-glassed windows, dating back to the 13th and 14th century, are some of the oldest in any church or cathedral in the world!! This cathedral also had an astronomical clock which was amazing! It was HUGE and it showed all kinds of different things aside from the time. (You can see a picture of the clock further down on the right). Later on in the day we went and got pretzels for a snack because that is an Alsace specialty, and they were well worth it! It was one of the best pretzels I've ever had! And that pretty much concluded our day in Strasbourg. We spent the night at a hotel in Strasbourg, and then the next morning we left to go see a castle named Haut-Koenigsbourg, and Riquewihr, a cute little touristy Alsacian town. 
Haut-Koenigsburg is a castle from the medieval ages, and it has switched back and forth between French and German royalty many times. Since the castle is so old most of what is in the room isn't what was in the rooms back then, but the castle was still beautiful! It makes sense why each royalty would have wanted it because it was in perfect strategic location, high up on a cliff overlooking everything. Also for being a medieval castle it was very well kept up and also surprisingly well decorated. When I think of medieval castles, I think of just stones and every room being simple and basic, but the rooms of this castle had stain-glassed windows, and the walls of the passageways were painted with intricate designs, so it was definitely not a typical medieval castle. We had perfect weather again this day for seeing the castle because it was in the upper 70s and sunny. This turned out to be a really good thing because the 
castle wasn't heated, so if it had been cold, it definitely would not have been as fun! After the castle we headed to the little town of Riquewihr for some lunch and wine tasting. The wine in Alsace is very different than the wine in Burgundy. First of all they name their wines after the grapes in Alsace, whereas they name their wines after towns or places in Burgundy. They also have much sweeter wines in Alsace because of the way the wine is processed. We got to taste 3 wines in our wine tasting all of which were really good, I actually liked the wine much better in Alsace than the wines here in Dijon or Beaune. I liked the Reisling wine we tasted so much that I decided to buy a bottle to bring back to the US with me! 
There is a myth that buying nice wine in France is really expensive, but it is actually surprisingly really inexpensive. The Reisling wine that I bought was in the top category of Reisling wine and it was only 15 euros for a bottle which is an amazing deal! After the wine tasting we got on our bus and headed to our hotel in Colmar and rested a bit before dinner. For dinner we went to a restaurant that was in what is called "Petite Venise" which is Little Venice. It's called that because part of Colmar is situated right on a river and there are gondola rides, so it looks like Venice, Italy! It was really cute and we had a really good dinner! After dinner we headed back to the hotel and fell fast asleep cause we were all exhausted! Our last day in Alsace, Sunday, we went to the art museum in Colmar which is world-renowned because it houses the Isenheim Altarpiece, a very famous piece of art 
work by Matthias Gruewald. We studied this altarpiece in Art History at University of Puget Sound, so it was really cool to see it in person. The scale of this altarpiece is incredible, it was so huge, it was almost hard to fit in a picture. There are also 3 seperate parts to this altarpiece, but in order to display it they had to separate all 3 pieces because they couldn't have tourists unfolding the altarpiece to look at it. The first part is the crucifixion, then there is the resurrection, and then the third part is dedicated to Saint Antoine. It was absolutely amazing, and what was even cooler is that they are pretty sure Grunewald created this whole piece 
near Colmar. After visiting the art museum, we went to lunch! We were luckily able to sit outside which was so nice since it was around 80 degrees outside! Our lunch was amazing, and it felt like summer with the weather, even though it was still early April! We had wonderful salads and for dessert I had one of the best desserts I've ever had in my life. It was called a Raspberry Melba and it was Raspberry sorbet with a little bit of Vanilla ice cream and lots of whipped cream and raspberries inside! It was amazing and being out in the sun probably made it 100 times better! After lunch we had to get back on the bus and head back to Dijon which was so hard because it meant we had to leave this gorgeous area of France and we also had to leave the gorgeous weather to sit on a bus for 4 hours and head back to Dijon where it turned out to be raining! But luckily in Dijon it only rained Sunday, and we had beautiful weather all the rest of the week with sun and temperatures in the high 70s and even reaching temperatures over 80 this weekend!A week from today I'm heading off for Spring Break to Barcelona, Athens, and Santorini! I have lots of planning to do but I'm also really excited and we should hopefully have lots of warm weather there!
A bientot!
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