Strasbourg, France and Other Forgotten Local Trips

When we first moved to Germany, I thought I would document every single thing we did and every single trip we took. Then, after visiting a lot of places, I've gotten pretty lazy.

We've decided to try to visit a new place at least every other weekend. We hope to continue that trend through summer as it will probably be our last full summer in Europe. So far, we have done a lot of traveling both near and far since May!

Several weekends ago, we took a trip to Strasbourg, France. Strasbourg is the home of the United Nations headquarters and is located in the Alsace region of France which has traded hands multiple times through history between France and Germany. The inhabitants of Alsace now speak both French and German with a very distinctive accent... or so I'm told.

Strasbourg was a beautiful city which is only 2 hours from our house. It's actually how I imagined most German cities would look before we moved here. The buildings seem to mimic the Bavarian architecture with their own extremely intricate markings which made them look much more artistic and, well, French. I actually told Greg that I think the most beautiful building I've ever seen was in Strasbourg. He didn't completely agree with that sentiment, but did comment that the architecture was more unique than in Germany.

We didn't do a whole lot in Strasbourg other than walk around and eat. The food was great and the town was beautiful, which was good enough for a day trip. It's also fun to be able to say that we can drive to France for a day from our house.

I love this picture of Greg.
(Obviously, this is not the day that it rained)

Twice in the past few months, we've driven up to Bozerwolf off-road park a little over an hour from our house to take the Jeep off-roading. Once, we camped out overnight for Jeep Topless day, which was unfortunately far too cold and rainy to actually take the top off of the Jeep. This was our first European camping experience. It is mostly illegal to go backpack camping here in Germany, so we have to plan out a campsite in advance.

Each weekend we've been in town, we've attending at least one festival in our local area. Wine festivals are just beginning in the Rhine-Main region and we are more than happy to attend. Our own local wine festival won't start until next month, so we have several more weekends to enjoy the festivities in our area. Germans definitely love to party outdoors in the summer!

Finally, we've also taken two bigger trips, one to hike in Bavaria at Konigsee, and another to Rome, Italy with a minor detour to the Naples area to visit the ruins of Pompeii. I'm already working on those posts, so bare with me as I slowly catch up on our adventures!