France

The last topic of my intense week of end-February tourism will be . . . . France. I've been fantasizing about it ever since I found out it was a mere 150 km due west from Stuttgart. The land of tasty coffee and a language I can understand. The coffee was just as tasty as I remembered, but my ability to speak French has been somewhat compromised by learning German. I still understood, but whenever I tried to answer the words were a bit of a German-French hash.

The closest French city to Stuttgart is Strasbourg. It is extremely quaint, with a very large old city centre. It is also flat as a pancake (hence the bicycles).

Strasbourg

In terms of tourism, Strasbourg is most well-known for its cathedral. This is pretty standard, except for the truly enormous astrological clock which has only a weak link to any kind of Christian imagery. Not sure how it ended up in the cathedral.

Cathedral entrance, with crazy-intricate carvings

We also went to eat flamm, a specialty of the Alsace region that I got hooked on while living in Montreal. So tasty . . . 
Unfortunately the escape from Baden-Württemberg was just a bit too short. The novelty of eating Maultaschen has sadly not yet returned. I need to make more of an effort with the cooking.