Alsace and Strasbourg Christmas market

Strasbourg Christmas market has been on our list for a while, but, so far, it's been difficult to fit in. As we are spending Christmas in France this year, we have taken the opportunity to spend a few days in Alsace and Strasbourg.
We are travelling by train; from Beziers to Montpellier (30 mins) and then a train direct from there to Strasbourg (6 hours) and the final leg is a local train to the nearest town to our winemaker town (Barr, 30 mins). 
There has been a lot of rain in the Languedoc in the last week, but the temperature has been around 15 degrees.  By contrast, we are expecting temperatures only just above zero in the north east of France and there is a possibility of seeing snow.
As we travelled along the Mediterranean coast and through Montpellier, we saw plenty of flooded winefields. Our route from Montpellier takes us through Nîmes, the up the Rhone valley to Lyon, Macon in Burgundy, across to Chalons in the Champagne region, Besançon, Belfort, Mulhouse, near the Swiss German border and Strasbourg on the German border.  
We reached Beziers at 07:30 this morning via the school bus.  It was still dark, so we had a good view of the Christmas decorations. We thought that Santa was quite cute.
Our train trip went smoothly and so by evening, we were in our usual hotel which is now under new management.





Andlau, where we are staying is decked out for Christmas.  Many lamp posts are decorated with Christmas tree, making walking on the pavement hazardous.







On Tuesday, we walked to the next village to visit our winemaker, Jean-Pierre.  On the way, we spotted a foal with its mother.  We had seen and photographed the same foal just after it was born in May, so it was lovely to see it again, still with mum.
We met Jean-Pierre's father, Pierre en route, pruning the vines.  We were sad to hear that, Doris, Pierre's wife, had died very recently.  We knew her well, after 20 years of buying wine from the same domaine (below).







After arranging a tasting for the following day, we walked on to the next village, Barr, where we stopped for a cup of tea and a cake with Father Christmas at a cafe all decked out for Christmas.  Barr has its own small Christmas market which begins on Saturday.







This is where the local Christmas market will take place. 

All around the village are display boards recording the events of 70 years ago when France was liberated.  Although the Normandy landings anniversary were commemorated in June, Barr was liberated only in late November, 1944. At this point an American tank was destroyed by the Germans.




The wine fields on our way back to the hotel with low cloud and 2 degrees Celsius.


In the evening, we walked across to Mittelbergheim again to eat in a good restaurant where all the wines are from the village.  This is another Mittlebegheim domaine.


Pat and John on tour