Les vacances III: Strasbourg [AMENDED, May 1]

I am back from Strasbourg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg with my arm still entact, despite the best efforts of the Paris Metro to amputate it! Thank you unknown man who pushed the doors apart, otherwise I would be pecking away at the keyboard one-handed! I'm going to upload pictures later because I have to get them developped and scanned. It was not until I was onboard the TGV http://www.tgv.com/FR/ and some schmuck started snapping photos--nothing like flash dazzling your eyes at eight AM-- that I realized I'd left my nice camera back in Conflans. So, when I arrived in Strasbourg, I headed directly to the Monoprix http://www.monoprix.fr/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoprix and for 4.50 euro purchased a disposable camera. [May 1 UPDATE-- thank you 1 hour developping at Auchan Cergy, 20-some-odd-euros later, plus scanning, plus cropping, plus blablabla, we have some images!]All in all the city was charming in an overly-touristy-type of way. It was nice, but I can't quite put my finger on what I disliked. Was it all the porky Alsacian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsace food? The feeling of being more in Germany than in France (both the attitude of people and the architecture and...)? The offputting mall http://www.placedeshalles.com/ built essentially atop what was a synagogue in the 1800s until the Nazis destroyed it in 1940?
Don't get me wrong, there was plenty that was very appealing about Strasbourg-- the European Court of Human Rights http://www.echr.coe.int/echr/, kugelhopf glacé http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gugelhupf, bretzels http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretzel, fleur d'Alsace glace (think vanilla/kirsch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirschwasser ice cream), the sweet gentleman in the Gingerbread Store with whom I had a delightful little conversation in French, the stunning cathedral http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Cathedral, etc. It is just that after Nantes, and Conflans, and Paris, and yes, even Cergy, Strasbourg is not home.... Nice to visit, and glad I did, but that is that!