European Holiday 2025 - Strasbourg, France

Another train journey, this time a short two hour trip from Strasbourg to Paris.  

When my wife first prepared the list of book stores found in Strasbourg she commented I'd be impressed, and I was.  During our time there we visited at least 15 book stores, all located within a 30 minute radius of our hotel.

La Tache Noire was a great find.  The store specialises in new and second-hand thrillers and crime novels.

The store had many photos on its walls of authors who had visited and signed books.  On the day we visited the owner was waiting for a local Strasbourg author, Annette Fern, to make an instore appearance and sign her books.

Another bookshop, which was fortunately located opposite our hotel was Kleber.  Most likely named because of the central plaza adjacent to it, this store had thousands of new French language books for sale.

On the opposite side of the central plaza, Place Kleber, was Gallimard.  This store also sold new books and appeared to be linked to the Kleber bookstore specialising in international language books including English.  I found one book here absent from my collection, Ian Fleming's "Live And Let Die" published by William Morrow in the U.S., however the cover was slightly damaged due to the poor quality of the paper stock used by the publisher.  This didn't surprise me though.

We also visited a nice second-hand store which appeared to be operated by an older couple, neither of whom could speak English.  We managed to find only one James Bond novel however they had plenty of good quality used books.

And here's some of photos of other book stores we visited or encountered:

Also, yesterday the Saturday market was held in Place Kleber, and featured numerous second hand book stalls.  Strasbourg is certainly a place to visit if you love beautiful old towns... and books !

Finally, here's some photos of beautiful Strasbourg:

The gothic Strasbourg Notre-Dame Cathedral notable for having only one spire

The canals

The Old Town