Another Art Pursuits tour with a pre-modern-era focus, and, like the South Tyrol and Salzburg, another destination that is very German, but not in Germany.

Thursday 22nd
Met tour manager Julie and tour guide Richard in front of the check-in desks at St Pancras at 8.00ish for the 09:31 Eurostar to Paris. The check-in's only excitement was the passport gates kicking me back as I had my wheelie case behind me, not in front. How did it know and why did it matter? From the list of fellow passengers I'd expected only two people to be familiar, but I was wrong, as usual. In Paris a coach took us to the Gare de l’Est for our very fast TGV train to Strasbourg, where we walked from the station to the Hotel Hannong, whilst our luggage went by minibus.

After time to unpack and settle in we met for a welcome drink in the rooftop bar. (But is it a rooftop bar if it's on the roof of the first floor of a six-story building?). We then set out our first group meal at Maison Kammerzell, a spectacular building nest to the cathedral that the food couldn't match. The leak tart starter wasn't given to the veggies to start, it turned out because it had eggs. We reassured them we weren't vegans. Main course for us was some blandly-sauced tofu. The apple tart with ice cream was my highlight.

Friday 23rd
The hotel breakfast was up to scratch. Odd to have to order the orange juice, with the coffee, but a goodly cake selection, including a powerfully cinnamony nutty tart thing.

We were scheduled to spend the morning in Strasbourg Cathedral, but our visit was cut short because of the famous clock. We all had to leave so that the people wanting to see the clock do it's thing could then pay to come back in. Our plans were therefore juggled so that, after coffee, we visited the most excellent cathedral museum. It is full of bits, mostly of stone, and sculptures, often the originals of copies now on the outside of the cathedral.

After lunch we strolled through the pretty, very half-timbered bits of the more commercial old streets, including the tanners' district. Taking in the mediaeval church of Saint Thomas, for a bit of the old Romanesque, to try to recognise squinches, and admire the well over-the-top tomb of Marshall Maurice de Saxe. There were stretches of canal, locks and bridges too. Also at one stage we encountered a small party of small children accompanied by six soldiers wearing floppy berets but carrying large machine guns. One theory put forward was that they may have been refugee children. Finally we returned to the cathedral to finish our curtailed morning visit.

An independent evening, but Julie and Richard took us to a cute riverside joint where I had a goat's cheese and honey tarte-flambe with a weissbier, followed by coconut and cinnamon ice cream. My favourite meal of the trip, as it turned out.

Saturday 24th
Off by coach to Colmar, there to see Isenheim Altarpiece, the multi-panel polyptych long on my bucket list. It did not disappoint, being one of those works that reproductions do not do justice to. Being in amongst all the layers, of which there are many, displayed separately is really the only way. It is also displayed off of a really sweet cloister, and other rooms contain more interesting stuff, notably by Martin Schongauer.

After an independent lunch - I found an Italian deli with seats outside that did an excellent mozzarella and tomato panzerotto - we regrouped to visit the Collégiale de Saint Martin. This church looms spectacularly and elegantly, and contains a lovely Schongauer altarpiece and copies of the fine panels which we saw the originals of in the museum this morning. The coach then took us to Ottmarsheim, to see the octagonal 11th-century abbey church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. A fascinating place of rough walls, three levels of arched balconies and fresco-fragment embellishments.

The group meal tonight was at the Brasserie Floderer - a salad starter (the rest had foie gras!), then polenta with pesto, and chocolate sponge, all OK.

Sunday 25th
On the coach, firstly to Sélestat for firstly a quick look, before a service started,  inside the Eglise de Sainte-Foy, nice and Romanesque and built in the 12th century. But we're really here for the Humanist Library, which has a fine display of manuscripts and early printed books. All in glass cases, of course, but good stuff. Also an entertaining console thingy which allows you to play at early typesetting, on a screen, and then print out your efforts, usually your name, onto a slip of card.

Then back on the coach, on to the town of Riquewihr, a pretty little medieval tourist trap, with lots of wine for sale, as well as a shop selling every flavour of pain d'epices. Also cans of pain d'epices flavour soda. I acquired the plum and cinnamon pain, and elsewhere a small local xmas fruit cake and a bag of very varied and superior almond petit-fours. We had an included lunch here, at l'Arbalétrier, which was good, if not memorable. I had a slice of onion tart, the rest had quiche, I had a cheesy potato bake thing, they had half a chicken each. I don't tend be a ranty veggie, but I seem to have spent a fair amount of time surrounded by some disgusting meat being eaten this trip. The after-lunch wine tasting I decided to give a miss, in order to explore a cemetery I'd spotted coming in on the coach. A nice one, if with rather too much polished marble.

I took advantage of an evening during which we were left at our leisure to revisit the tanneries area that we had explored on the way to the restaurant on Friday, as I had suffered a photographic failure. A plant-based Whopper followed.

Monday 26th
By coach again, to Rosheim, for the 12th-century Romanesque church of Saints Peter and Paul - a feast of architectural details and carved capitals. Before coffee we went to look at the Romanesque house, not something you see everyday, which was equally rough and handsome. Lots of cake temptation at the place where we stopped for coffee, which few of us resisted. Me, I went for the vanilla creme Madeleine. Some of the group also stocked up on baguettes for lunch later, but when I asked if they had any which did not contain dead animals I was told a brisk no, with no hint of apology or contrition. Then to nearby Avolsheim and the teeny Chapel of St Ulrich with its dome and ceiling of faded, but evocative and mysterious, frescoes.

Then to Molsheim, which was largely closed, including the interesting church, whose opening times online bore no relation to reality. Here a helpful woman in a boulangerie made me a tasty, and long, cheese and salad baguette. And just before we piled onto the coach I had a lemon and Bounti (sic) ice cream. Then, after rather too many satnav failures, we made it to the mountain top abbey of Mont Sainte-Odile, which was slim pickings.

A independent evening but Julie and Richard took a party of eight to a rather better Alsatian, where I had a baked potato and cheese thing called Poêlon de Munster au four, but a much nicer than one I'd had earlier in the trip. And a light, and cold, creme brulee.

Tuesday 27th
By coach to Wingen-sur-Moder and the René Lalique museum. I quite like art- nouveau and glass art, so only quite liked the place. Lunch was a goat's cheese salad, with the cheese served hot on chunks of focaccia, at the museum café.

Then on to Neuwiller-lès-Saverne and the Catholic Church of Saints Peter and Paul, which is mostly mighty fine and Romanesque with discreet baroque additions. The local guide brought his little dog, later found out to be called Oreo, who scampered around with us through the visit, and introduced me to the new joy of church visits whilst getting one's hand kicked. Out the back was the upstairs crypt, dedicated to Saint Sebastian, where we had a private visit to see the 16th-century tapestries of the life and miracles of Saint Adelphe. Then we were taken down to the lower crypt, dedicated to Saint Catherine, which was more crypty, being damp and large with bare stone walls and bits of fallen architecture collected along the sides. Neither of these crypts were particularly subterranean, especially not the upstairs one, but crypt, I learned, just refers to a secret space, not an underground one. Then we went over the road to admire the oddly-shaped church of Saint-Adelphe. Where the tapestries above used to live and were Lutherans and Catholics have worshipped. And where our hands were not allowed to dry.
Back on the coach, with Oreo, who had to be chased off. Our next visit took us to Marmoutier, and the abbey of Saint Etienne, once home to a monastic community originally founded by Irish monks in the late 6th century. Its 12th century Romanesque façade was most imposing, and furnished us with our last cushion capitals of the trip. It had an archaeological crypt also, complete with patches of tiled floor.

At the end of our final group meal tonight a couple with a very large dog had their bike stolen. Talking to them on the way out it turns out their bike had had a dog trailer on the back as their dog couldn't walk far. They were waiting for a cab to take them and the dog to the police station. Odd that it took until today for dogs to feature in our trip, twice, given how Alsatian the week had been.

Wednesday 28th
Some of us joined the luggage in a minibus to the station, most of us walked. Unsurprisingly the journey home was the journey to Strasbourg in reverse. Except the coach trip between stations in Paris was a bit more squalid coming home, and buying a sandwich from Pret in the Gare du Nord involved ordering from a counter, not self-service. Weird.

Unfortunately, as I type this a few days after coming home, my major takeaway from this trip is being grossed out by the in-your-face meat being eaten around me. Not just bits hidden amongst pasta or half-hidden by the cheese on a pizza. And Foie Gras is, after all, not just meat but the result of torture. I get used to people on these trips asking me why I'm a veggie. Most then claim to almost be veggies themselves, to which I smile politely. But when these people have no qualms or hesitation tucking into...well, I quote from PETA...

To produce “foie gras” , workers ram pipes down the throats of male ducks twice each day, pumping up to 2.2 pounds of grain and fat into their stomachs, or geese three times a day, up to 4 pounds daily. The force-feeding causes the birds’ livers to swell to up to 10 times their normal size.
The state which this process puts them into in their cages I leave you to imagine.
Since foie gras is made from the livers of only male ducks, all female ducklings—40 million of them each year in France alone—are useless to the industry and are therefore simply tossed into grinders, live, so that their bodies can be processed into fertilizer or cat food.

The production of foie gras is hence banned in many countries including the United Kingdom.