A week in London, Cambridge, and Alsace-Lorraine

Somewhere in Lorraine is a purple button.  And a piece of my duffel bag's now-broken shoulder strap.  Things have been crazy to say the least.

After Paris, I headed over to Cambridge to visit Brandon.  Cambridge is just about the quaintest town ever, brimming with brick buildings, universities, old-fashioned candy shoppes, and bikes.  It looks a lot like Boston - or, I guess, Boston looks a lot like it.

The pubs in England are great and super laid-back.  We got our share of good local beer, pub food, playing checkers, and people-watching.

We also had afternoon tea, which is a tradition that I think the US needs to adopt (if only to poke fun at the recent conservative movement).  English breakfast tea, freshly-baked scones, and muffins - I could get used to this!

We took a day-trip to London on New Year's Eve and after much indecision, we decided, sure, why not watch the fireworks.  Not thinking in advance, we were just about the soberest people there, but that made everyone else all the more hilarious.

The fireworks were absolutely amazing (unfortunately, no pictures), shot out not only behind the London Eye, but from it.

From England, I headed onto Alsace, a region that has flip-flopped four times between France and Germany from the late 19th century to post-WWII, when it was officially given over to France.  The influence of both countries' architecture on the area is very evident, and I enjoyed, if nothing else, losing myself in the details on and in the buildings.

Such a cute little gargoyle!

Ok, well I also enjoyed the food. I tried out one of the very regional dishes, a Flammekeuche - a type of pizza with cream, ham, and onions.  Mmm..

I jumped on a train for a day to see a smaller town, Colmar, which has a lot of the same, cute architecture in Strasbourg and I couldn't help but wonder where the bread crumbs were..




And since I was visiting one flip-flopping ex-German territory, I decided to check out the other: Lorraine.  I have a Eurail pass, which allows me to jump from train to train on a given day, so even though Nancy, France was out of my way, why not?

And I guess that somehow justifies my wanting to get an authentic Quiche Lorraine.

The city had much more French architecture and a lot fewer tourists - a welcome change.  Unfortunately, one thing the city lacked was luggage storage.  I was stuck for 3 hours with a super-heavy duffel bag on my back in drizzly rain.

Long story short, adjusting the bag tore a button off my jacket and, while waiting at an intersection, wondering how much weight plastic strap-holders can take, the strap collapsed.  Then it started raining and I didn't have my umbrella handy.  I was originally planning to go to Mulhouse and perhaps Basel on the way back, but, I decided, it was time to head back to Geneva.