Strasbourg

The city of Strasbourg, near the German border in the Alsace region of France, was the home base for the study abroad program I did in the spring quarter of my junior year. Here are some of the sights I saw pretty much every day.

Place Kléber

This is Place Kléber, my favorite place in Strasbourg. It's in the center of town, near where the two tram lines cross, and not too far from the cathédral. I loved the cluster of French and EU flags. There are jumping fountains where the kids (including me! ;) like to play. The building behind the flags is the librarie (bookstore) where I liked to hang out and read the English books and Calvin and Hobbes en français.

Homme de Fer

This is the Homme de Fer station, where the two tram lines crossed—a very busy place. It's around the corner from Place Kléber, and you can see the Homme de Fer (Iron Man) for whom it's named in the previous picture. I loved riding the tram around town: it was so cute, and convenient! I took this picture when I was walking around town by myself the evening before I flew back to the USA, just after a huge rainstorm.

The Little Cathedral

This was the river that ran through the city. In the distance, you can see the smaller of the two cathedrals in Strasbourg. This was very close to the Internet café where we went almost every day, walking along the river to get there. One weekend we also rode one of the boats that you can see in the photo, for a cute little river tour of Strasbourg.

Chez Pierre

Ah, Chez Pierre—our communication headquarters! This was the Internet café where all of us K students got monthly memberships. Its real name was Net Sur Cour, but some girls started calling it Chez Pierre because the day we first went there, we had already met a handful of Pierres and they decided there might be something to that stereotype that every French male is named Pierre. The name caught on for all of us, but we were devastated later to find out that the guy who ran the place was actually named Joseph, and that one of the Pierres we had met was Canadian, not French.) Anyway, in the photograph, you can see the cour, off of which there were three narrow computer rooms. One of them is through the second door (the first one was always locked), one of them was behind that little tree on the other side, and the third was at the end of the hall.

The European Parliament

Strasbourg is the capital of the European Union, and one of the places where the European Parliament meets. For a field trip in our EU class, we actually got to go inside and see them debating EU laws. They all spoke their native languages, and we put on headphones and listened to the translators—so cool! That day they were discussing extradition of terrorist suspects to US: that was problematic for them because the US has the death penalty, which the EU (good for it!) has banned. It was so exciting to get to sit in on something like that!

Paris

Our first train trip of the program was to Paris for a weekend in early April. We were there for a day and a half, and we spent most of the full day walking around because some people in our group refused to take the Métro (subway) anywhere. I figured later that we walked about seven miles that day. We saw the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides (Napoleon's tomb), le Jardin des Tuileries, the outside of the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, and everything in between, since we were walking.

La Tour Eiffel

We got up early and walked from our hotel to La Tour Eiffel, getting there just as it opened. (Too bad we didn't wait a little while, really, since the sun came out just as we were leaving! Oh well.) We went all the way to the top, which was very exciting for me: I had been to the Eiffel Tower before, with my family in 1993, but my mom didn't let me go all the way to the top, even though my dad went and I really wanted to go too. This time, though, I got to go all the way up! :)

Climbing the Stairs

This is me somewhere between the ground and the second level of the Tower. Anny and I chose to take the stairs, just because it would be cool to say we climbed the Eiffel Tower. You can only walk to the second level, though; you have to take the elevator from the second to the third. The climb wasn't actually that bad. It was fun hiking to dizzying heights inside a tangle of metal.

Le Jardin des Tuileries

We had lunch in the Jardin des Tuileries, which was very pretty. It was also a very expensive. (€8.50 for an ice cream sundae, as I recall!) Poor college travelers should really not eat there, but apparently I was the only one on a budget on this trip, so I called it a special splurge. You're paying for the location (near the Louvre), of course, and it was nice, thought also touristy. From left to right, these are Amy, Annie, me, Kelly, and Mary Beth. Anny was taking the picture.