Our Blog - Strasbourg and Colmar, France

This year, our Christmas Market trip was a fairly short journey to the Alsace area of France, in the NorthEast part of the country. We had wanted to go to the Strasbourg Christmas Market when we were living in Paris over 10 years ago, but we never made it there. So in February, we booked flights and a hotel, and made plans to finally get to Strasbourg and the neighboring town of Colmar for the Christmas Markets there.

Now ... this was a bit of an interesting trip, to say the least. Problem #1: the trip started with a shooting at the Christmas Market in Strasbourg the day before we flew there (yep, the DAY BEFORE). We went ahead and went and only had to move a couple things around since the market was closed for the first couple of days that we were there. Security was tight and we ended up opening our bags every few hours as we walked around town.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful. Then we caught the train from the airport to the center of town, and then the tram over near our hotel. We rented an apartment instead of a hotel and we were unable to check in when we arrived since we had an early flight. We pre-booked luggage storage through a company called "NannyBag". Problem #2: we arrived at the address of our NannyBag and there was nothing there. We called the contact number and had a conversation in French that kept ending with him saying that it was impossible that I had a reservation since he closed it. Mind you ... we did make the booking 10 months ago :-) So we did a chat with NannyBag customer support, who moved our reservation to a hotel near the train station. Okay, so better, although we had to back-track to the train station to drop off the luggage.

Then we had lunch, did a bit of walking around town, and then went to get our luggage and head to the apartment. No problems with the apartment, it was GREAT! 👍 Getting INTO the apartment was Problem #3. It was a pretty nice setup: they gave us the code to the front door via email, and then we call them when we get to the door of the apartment, which was up a TINY spiral staircase (good thing we had small suitcases). Then the owner can remotely open the door, except that it didn't work! He tried multiple times but nothin' doin', and so the owner had to drive into town while we sat there for 15 minutes. He ended up changing the batteries in the remote lock and everything was great after that. He gave us a quick tour of the apartment and gave us a set of keys.

A few words about Strasbourg itself before we see the sights....Strasbourg is the 9th largest metropolitan area in France and is one of the capitals of the EU (along with Brussels and Luxembourg). It is the seat of several European institutions, such as the Council of Europe (with the European Court of Human Rights, the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and the European Audiovisual Observatory) as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. The historic city centre, called the Grande Île (Grand Island), was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, the first time such an honor was placed on an entire city centre.

It is interesting for a couple points: throughout history it has been Roman, then French, then German, then French, then German, and finally French. Confused ... well, the Roman camp of Argentoratum was first mentioned in 12 BC making it a very old city. After being governed by bishops for a long time, it became a free imperial city in 1262. It stayed that way until 1681 when it was conquered by King Louis XIV, making it French. In 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War, the city became German again, until 1918 (end of World War I), when it reverted to France. After the defeat of France in 1940 (World War II), Strasbourg came under German control again; since the end of 1944, it is again a French town.

Also, it is known world-round for its Christmas Market and touts itself as the "Capital of Christmas". This is the reason that we went, and you'll get a great view of all of the decorations around the city.

I've split the blog into 3 parts:

• The sights of the town of Strasbourg
• The Marche de Noel (Christmas Market) and Christmas decorations
• The town of Colmar