Winter Vacation

French school systems are one of the best organised systems I have seen. The best part being the number of vacations incorporated into the semester. February’s winter vacation was the week of the 16th.
A group of 7 of us (3 Canadians : Melissa, Clancy and I; 3 Australians : Siobhan, Gillian and Luke; and 1 Irish : David) went up north to explore that region of France. We left bright and early on the Monday morning – our train left at 08h18 meaning we had to be up and gone by 07h45 – INSANE!! I like sleeping till noon! Arriving at the Strasbourg gare after 18h30, we went in search of our hotel, Arc-en-Ciel (Rainbow). We passed by a Pizza Hut en route and made a mental note. We checked in dropped our stuff and went in search of food.

The next day, it rained. All day. Non-stop. The first store that we saw with umbrellas, we all ducked in and invested. There was a serious need. The weather was about 1ºC, super cold. My shoes were completely soaked within 20mins of leaving. We wandered through the downtown of Strasbourg, seeing the canals, the Cathedral, the old half-timber houses, finding a sweet candy shop, and invaded the tourist office for heat. The cathedral housed an astrological clock with a movie in French, English and German on its history and meaning. It was interesting, but by the end of the 25mins our feet were completely numb, oh the pain. We then found the boat tour. It was amazing!! It had a glass dome over it with the heat on full blast!! Just beautiful! Italian food for lunch (more heat) and then we wandered some more over to the Contemporary art museum. Many interesting pieces.

Wednesday morning, we were off to Germany. There is a city, Kehl, just over the border and is part of the public transport system. So we explored Kehl, stopped for lunch after feeding the ducks and swans for a while. It was hilarious. There was a river that had an inch of ice on the surface, the Aussies had never seen anything like it. They couldn’t get over it! They stood there forever just throwing rocks at it. The rest of us were just amused by their reaction.

Thursday, we headed west to Metz. We wandered through the city forever with all of our stuff because the map wasn’t clear, not at all. Finally we arrived, stopping for directions 3 times, and the hostel was closed between 10h00 à 17h00!! Insane! Anyways, we went in search of food and somewhere to plunk with all of our luggage. We found a fast food Italian restaurant, which was surprisingly good. After 2,5 hours at the restaurant, we were off to the hostel, stopping on the way at the biggest cathedral in town. Cathèdral St. Étienne, it is huge, all of sand stone and has the largest collection of stained glass in the world – 6500m²!! It was huge!

Friday morning we were off to Luxembourg!! It was only 15euros round trip and another country we could check off of the map! Sweet! we checked out the downtown area, went through the local museum on the history of the city with a special exhibit on religion (very interesting and insightful – it was a quiz like thing that evaluated whether or not you were religious or not), went for lunch, kept exploring – found the ruins, there were walls that had been hit by WWI air raid bombs and therefore were not standing anymore. There was a lot of climbing up and down the ravine, but the view was definitely worth it. There was a stream that ran through the ravine that had a walking path beside. It was absolutely gorgeous. It tends to happen when there is no nature or water or living thing to see in the city in which you are currently residing. That evening, we decided to go out and hit up one of the local pubs. It was a great atmosphere and everyone there that we talked to asked us why on earth we were visiting Metz with our week off. We said that we just wanted to see it and that it was different than anything else we had seen in France so far. There were two guys that were especially friendly with us, Lillian and Yvan. One even bought us a round!

One Saturday we were kicked out of the hostel at 11 so that the lady could clean for the new guests (which we guessed were few). We ate the free breakfast (well, actually included – baguette and jam) and went on our way. We wandered the city a little further, found the main river, played with the ducks, found bamboo, enjoyed the views, then headed to the gare (train station). We pretty much slept the whole way home. We arrived in Lyon at 22h22, then had to wait for the 23h19 train to St. Étienne. When we finally walked the 2km from the gare to our residence, it was 00h35 and we were completely exhausted. And sleep well we did.