Une cathédrale et un château

Where I left off on the last post, me and David took the train up north from Grenoble to Nancy (where he goes to college). We didn’t actually want to do or see anything in Nancy, but we wanted to go somewhere close-by!

On Wednesday morning, we took the train to Strasbourg- the city where I lived last year! It’s just about an hour away from Nancy. It’s always fun to walk through the medieval, German-looking streets of Strasbourg.

After walking around Petite France, the city center, we of course had to stop in the cathedral, which is one of my favorites in Europe. The stained glass looked cooler than usual because it was actually sunny outside- not something you encounter very often in northern France.

After our sightseeing, lucky David got to have his first experience of waiting for me while I shop. When I’m in France, there’s really no choice to shop or not to shop. I HAVE to say hello to my favorite stores. I didn’t find a ton to buy, but it made me happy just to be in those places. 

Our next stop was the town of Lunéville, a small town close to Nancy that has a castle. A castle is definitely a good enough reason to make a stop in a town. We actually went to Lunéville together for the first time about a year ago!

The first time we were here, we walked by this church but it was closed... so we had to visit it this time.

After a little wandering, we found the castle again. The Chateau de Lunéville was where the Dukes of Lorraine lived. There's not a lot to see inside the castle, but it's nice to sit outside in the gardens. It wasn't super warm outside, but thankfully it wasn't super cold either!

When we were here a year ago we stayed too long at the castle, got a little lost, and almost missed our trains. But this year, we were both much more mature and successfully made it back to the train station.

Back in Nancy, we had some fine French cuisine for dinner. Just kidding, we went to an America-themed restaurant haha. You might not have guessed that they exist, but I've seen several American-inspired restaurants in France. This one was like a 50s diner. They even had Happy Days playing on the TVs there. I never thought I'd see Fonzie in France.

It was fun to be back in America for a little while! The main thing that wasn't authentic was that there was no grilled cheese on the menu. What self-respecting American diner wouldn't have grilled cheese? 

That night, we went to bed early in preparation for our 7a.m. train to Paris the next day. After less than 2 days, it was time to say au revoir to Alsace and Lorraine and bonjour to the best city in the world!