In which Petite France offers festive delights

There's a subtle sales role within La Cure Gourmande. They ever so gently offer you a modest bon-bon or biscuit and maybe a basket to make carrying things easier.

Let's just say we now have enough biscuits for any amount of New Year celebrations. Oh, and chocolate.

Strasbourg's old town has many small alleys, twists and turns and knows how to decorate stylishly for Noel. In one area, the lighting across the middle of the cobbled street was chandeliers.

We visited the Russian Market, the various Christmas fairs and even the local co-op for those last few wine bottles to supplement a planned festive fondue during the New Year season.

twisting the day away

Back along the twisty roads on the North side of Lake Thun. Complete with those tunnels like the ones on the Corniche in Italy and made famous by various James Bond movies.

Later we'd be going through some of the urban tunnels cutting through Basel. They remind me of some kind of club lighting scene, with their lime green verticals and pulsing white lights.

Our destination is the old part of Strasbourg, as a stopping off point on the way back to the UK.

mountains, snow, lakes, sunshine

Early morning drinking on the side balcony as the sun begins to rise from behind the mountains. Our day filled with joys of the slopes rounded off as we see the sun setting behind the Jungfrau.

We'll be heading to the lakes next, where there will still be sights of the mountains although no snow on the ground, but hopefully sunshine. Then we will plot our course across to Strasbourg for some time in Petite France, before beginning the journey back to the UK.

Boxing Day on a Glacier

Well, we managed to get ourselves up in amongst the mountains today. This is around Jungfrau, Monch and Eiger and there's part of the Eigergletscher in the foreground.

As predicted, today had mainly sunshine, so although the temperature was minus 12 degrees Centigrade, it really didn't feel cold. Maybe the schnapps in the coffee helped later on.

The pictures are pretty random at the moment, as I don't have any of my usual technology to sort and sift, instead making do with a USB cable and an iPhone.

Christmas sunshine

Most people I've spoken to during Christmas seem to be having a pretty good time. We're mainly out of electronic contact this year, with hastily uploaded picture and a post 'prepared earlier' on a word processor against the off-chance of a few minutes bandwidth.

We are in amongst the Alps at the moment, but rather eyeing the higher peaks, subject to sufficient good weather. I managed to catch the Christmas Day snap above in between a couple of snow flurries. Tomorrow promises more sustained sunshine.

festive good wishes

And when we decided to make sure our Christmas was snowy, we couldn’t have predicted the weather back home. Nonetheless, the pristine snow here, around half a metre deep, is just about right for the full-on effect.

Add a few mountain ranges and some gluhwein and it all begins to make sense. Santa was around during the evening too, and dropped a few peanuts, oranges and -er- Diam bars.

Wishing any passing readers the very best for the season. I'm mainly 'off the air' at the moment until the reindeer have passed by.

gratuitous Christmas morning piste scene

The cake shop detour

We have rule of thumb when we drive around in Europe that if we are within around 100 miles of Stuttgart, then we’ll drop into Böblingen. I lived there for a couple of years and its good to visit some old haunts.

A ritual is a visit to Cafe Frech, for a coffee and a cake. I lived next door to this cake shop and several of us would meet there informally on a Saturday morning to plan the weekend’s mischief.


We also still know a fair number of the surprisingly many cafes, bars and restaurants in the town and usually take advantage of one or two during a fly-by. And true to form, the roads were clear as we arrived, it then snowed overnight and gave us what amounted to a ‘before’ and ‘after’ view of the town.

I’ll have to save Böblingen for a proper post another day.

dream sequence?

"träume nicht dein leben, sondern lebe deinen traum!" - "Don't dream your life, instead live your dreams" said the diagonal writing on the wall above my bed.

I realised it was around 3am and through the open curtains I could see fresh gentle snow flakes replacing those that had melted during the day.

I moved slightly and the waterbed echoed with several new ripples. Today there will be Schwarzwälderkirschtorte.

pie eyed

"Great mince pies, which recipe did you use?"

Mum's twinkle of eye, "The one from the Carol Concert."

We reached around to pick out the programme from the shelf, where it was filed between 'The Triangle' and an Adobe Photoshop CS4 primer.

Sure enough, last week's Albert Hall concert had included a recipe for mince pies.

"The extra orange and apple is a great tip..."

We all nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, Ian was on his second plateful. The temporary family time was a useful respite from Uni and an excuse to power down and eat something that didn't look like an alien species food experiment. Sandwiched next to Ian was David, lost in his own world of butter thin margins. It was all, he explained, about knowing the best way to open the packet.

We paused at this profound thought.

Then Elizabeth was explaining the shopping phenomenon of Christmas Eve. "Its called Panic Buying," she assured us. "Most of the clothing will be returned to the stores. Men need to remember to 'buy small' rather than large if they are to escape some of the inevitable criticism."

I suggested an emergency purchase desk could be set up in the entrance of certain key stores, with a subset of emergency gifts and some sensible 'panic buying assistants' to help the last minute errant shoppers.

Ron was chattering about the recent trip to Twickenham ostensibly for a rugby match. Attending by public transport had created a unique opportunity for beer consumption which he and a few accomplices had found advantageous for many hours. The encounters with last train commuters sounded suitably improbable. You really did need to be there.

"More mince pies, anyone?"

interlude avec neige

Well, the train tracks may have been iced up, the trains stuck in the tunnels and the M20 reduced to a parking lot, but we found an excellent way to get to France, propelled by some of the finest mince pies on the planet.

There was nothing for it but to switch to the clearly posted signs for the Ferry and to dig deep into a Langham's breakfast on the ship before settling into the quiet comfort of the Club lounge. To be honest, it all passed so quickly that we nearly didn't have time to grab some Swiss Francs for later in the week.

As luck would have it, we were parked right by the front ramp from the ship, so we were first onto the road. After Calais, the French roads were decidedly quiet, with the main excitement being the occasional snowplough cutting a finely etched perimeter to the road surface.


And so we arrived. There was trauma amongst the ducks and swans. They'd had to up sticks and move to a remaining small pond of water in amongst the ice.

The drive was also rather snowy as the picture above suggests, and don't get me started on the moat. If anyone ever wanted to invade, just wait until the winter months to see the design defect in this particular form of defence. The idea of pouring hot water in to keep the moat defending just won't, well, hold water - even with a government grant. Stlll, the house has been here since the thirteenth century, so mustn't grumble.

Anyway, its time to draw the shutters for the evening, put another log on the fire and then maybe stroll along to the Orangery for a tipple and a nibble.

It's starting to feel a bit like Christmas.

santa claus

Yes, its official, based upon two web counters.

My highest accessed posts in December include the word "Santa".

EuroTunnel, Ferries, Weather, Motorways Updates for Xmas Travel

Countdown for the holiday season is well and truly under way. As I'm trying to get to France at the moment and the tunnel information on the Eurotunnel site is singularly useless, I thought I'd improvise a few links.

1 BBC Motorway information (M20) is the key one to watch Click Here

2 BBC Eurostar update Click Here

3 SE Weather forecast from the Met Office Click Here

4 Highways Agency Motorway Traffic Flow - select M20 Click Here

5 BBC Five Day Calais Weather Click Here

6 Traffic Master National live traffic jam reporting Click Here

7 meteofrance French weather shows orange alert for North France Click Here (Thanks, maximumbob)

8 Eurotunnel phone line (UK) 08444 63 00 00 (Thanks, Catherine)

There - that took all of ten twelve minutes to assemble.

Shame that Eurotunnel couldn't do something similar.

I've switched to the Ferry.