Boar's Head...Tureen

How would you like to eat soup served from this 18th century tureen? It was on display at the Museum of Decorative Arts.

A Variety of Buildings in Strasbourg

Signs of Spring in Store Windows!

Jewish Strasbourg

As Strasbourg has a large Jewish community, we decided to attend Friday night services at the "Synagogue de la Paix," the main synagogue inaugurated in 1958 to replace the Synagogue de Quai Kleber, inaugurated in 1898 and burnt and razed by the Nazis in 1940. We attended a Bar Mitzvah in the Sephardic congregation; although I was in the gallery above and couldn't see much, I enjoyed the different melodies being chanted.

We saw these Jewish stars in the pavement of a church near our hotel but never figured out why they were there.

In the Middle Ages, the Jewish community was centered in the Rue des Juifs, which we walked down on Saturday afternoon. A stone plaque indicates where the synagogue and mikvah were located.

Strasbourg's Cathedral

Built between 1176 to 1439, the Notre-Dame cathedral looms large over the city of Strasbourg. Our first encounter with this gothic edifice it was on our walk shortly after arriving in Strasbourg.

The cathedral's tower stands at 142 meters (466 feet or 34 stories), making the cathedral the world's tallest building from 1647 to 1874.

Here are perspectives of the cathedral from other parts of the city.

While David made the climb up to the tower (check out his blog post), I stayed below and enjoyed watching people walking in the square in front of the cathedral.

And similar to the portals of the cathedral in Metz, the blind-folded Synagoga is portrayed on the south portal.

Serious Recycling

On one of our walks in Strasbourg, we saw an operator picking up a bin of recyclables and emptying it into the truck.

Americana in Strasbourg