Arrival

We flew into Mulhouse, in southern Alsace (Haut Rhin).  We came to this region really because we were taking our 16-year-old son to a program run by CHAM where he spent a month working on repairing medieval monuments (see the last tab for more info on this).
We came through Frankfurt, arriving in Mulhouse at around noon.  I had been afraid that we would not be able to transport the bike in the boxes from the airport to our hotel in Mulhouse, but we found a van/taxi that would take it, though we had to take two taxis for the three of us, our baggage and the bike boxes.

Strasbourg is a very elegant international city with its own style.  There are canals throughout the city, and most of  the buildings have that classic medievale half-timbered look.  We just stayed there for a day, traveling on the train and back without the bike since we had our son with us.  We went on a tourist boat trip, climbed up to the top of the large cathedral and had a great dinner on a bridge.  We visited a museum of 18th century life. Just walking around is very picturesque. 

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Turkish food

Alsacien food is mostly quite delicious, but restaurants are quite expensive.  We sometimes spent $50 - $70 for a dinner for two.  In larger towns, like Mulhouse and Strasbourg, you could go to "Doner Kebab" places with Turkish food.  Here you could get a very large open pita bread filled with many slivers of meat, vegetables and sauce for about $4.  It was quite delicious and very filling. 
These shops were usually modern and pleasant, though fairly bare bones.  They had a sort of circular electric knife to cut the pieces of meat.