A little of break

A couple of random phone pictures from Christmas break....a little late but better than never!

View from The Rusty Pelican

^_^

Table decoration for Christmas Eve dinner

Baby Duckies!

Downtown Miami View

New Year Fireworks

Leg room on the flight back!

Strasbourg

For Friday and Saturdays, Germain and I took a mini trip over to Strasbourg to visit the Christmas Market. The Strasbourg Christmas market is well known and is often regarded as the captital of Christmas. Walking into the old town of Strasbourg, you definitely feel that it's a little more like Christmas. Decorations flooded the streets, from the top of the roofs to the insides of every tiny boutique. The air smelled like a mixture of hot wine and roasted chestnuts. Wooden stalls filled with trinkets occupied the side streets.

Christmas trees!

The Giant Christmas tree

Me with hot wine

Christmas ornaments

More stuff

Streets

And at night, Christmas lights lite up the streets.

Giant tree by night

Pretty street

Cathedral in the back

The architecture in Strasbourg is very unique as well. The houses have very steep roofs that allow the snow to fall and the wooden frame is often visible. The houses are usually painted different colors as well.

The Cathedral of Strasbourg is also very well known.

Outside

Rose Window

Pretty

For dinner, we ate at a restaurant recommended by one of Germain's classmates who is from the area. It serves very typical cuisine from the city. However, it was not our favorite. Very fatty and heavy. Oh well, it was worth the try.

Pork thigh covered with cheese with sauerkraut

sauerkraut with 5 of it's typical accompaniments

On Saturday, the town was extremely crowded. Since we were able to visit most of the things we wanted to on Friday, we took advantage of being so close to the border and went into Germany by bus! There wasn't a whole lot to see right across the border, but we can say that we've been to Germany now! ^_^

A church in Germany

Christmas everywhere!!

More Christmas decorations around the city! Enjoy!

The outside of Galerie Lafayette

The other side of Galerie Layfayette

Look it's Santa Clause!!

The Wheel and the Obelisk

Another angle

The Eiffel tower!! ok...not the real one...just a small version on the Champs-Elysee.

Christmas is near

So it's almost Christmas and the decorations are up in Paris. Supposedly it's not as nice as they were last year, but Christmas decorations are still pretty.

on the both sides of the streets of the Champs-Elyees

At the corner of the intersection on the Champs-Elysee