French Wine Country

One of our best weekend getaways, by far, was our recent trip to the Alsace region of France. The drive was doable (4.5 hours from Munich), but sure seemed long due to summer highway construction and the fact that we spend so little time in a car now that ANY time in a car seems long! Could it be the fact that our son is getting bigger and more active too???? Nah . . . .

To make the drive more fun, Jeff borrowed a BMW GT from the office to test and debug his Smart Phone project while we drove. William, showing a true case of like father, like son, demanded extensive testing of the interior light buttons by repeatedly signing for me to turn them on and off. The GT was super nice and comfortable, but unfortunately it's a gas-guzzler we won't be leasing any time soon.

We began winding our way down the wine road just in time for lunch stop and found a fun restaurant with French cuisine.

William opted out of the escargot and chose to gnaw on bread instead.

We had every intention of finding the Konigsbourg Castle all the web pages told us about, however we literally stumbled upon in while driving to extend William's nap. Thanks, Will. You sure are efficient to travel with!
Here we are outside the castle with a view of the valley behind us.

Konigsbourg Castle was restored in the early 1900s and definitely doesn't disappoint. It had a great self-guided tour with beautifully intricate rooms and courtyards.

Here's Jeff by an original wine barrel in the kitchen. Yes, please!

After a short drive to Ribeauville, we arrived at our hotel with plenty of time to explore this quaint little town.
*Hotel De La Tour is a great place to stay in Ribeauville*
www.hotel-la-tour.com

Scouting for our breakfast for the next day . . . I think this bakery will do . . .

A view of vineyards and another castle from the streets of Ribeauville. We couldn't get over how picturesque our surroundings were.

Everywhere we turned we felt as if we were on a movie set. It was all too surreal.

Thank goodness for beautiful surroundings. It made up for our disappointment when tasting the wine. We knew the region was famous for its rieslings and gewurtzraminer wines. These aren't usually our favorites, but we read that a good bottle from this region isn't necessarily sweet, but actually dry. After hefty research on Jeff's part, we still didn't find wine we absolutely loved, but it sure was fun to taste!

Instead of drinking our way through Ribeauville, we decided it was best to eat our way through it. We found this amazing sweet store (aptly named 'Guilt') with macarons. In addition to buying a box for dessert at lunch, Jeff and I decided we needed an ice-cream sandwich at 10:00 in the morning too! Stay tuned for a future blog post about our new gym membership.

On Sunday we explored Hunawir and Riquewihr, two other highly-recommended Medieval towns on the wine road.

My boys galavanting in Riquewihr.

Thanks to the helpful ladies in the information office (and my helpful husband who finally gave in to my pleas of, "Just ask information!!!"), we found a delightful park at which to eat our cheese, proscuitto, bread, and macaron lunch and let Will get some much-needed movement before our drive home.
How beautiful is this park??? Man, the kids in France don't even know how good they have it.

My cute boys

Fed up with two days of jarred baby food, Will decided to take lunch into his own hands.

"I will not be caaaagggeeedddd!!!"

Our happy little guy

What? You still have energy left? Okay, back through the tunnel with you.

One last stop on our way out of Alsace was in Dambach-la-Ville. We had to drive through the castle walls in order to get into the city. The town was asleep for the mid-day break, but we managed to fine one wine shop open and tasted one last bit of French wine.

On our way out of town we drove through a sobriety checkpoint directly outside the castle wall that hadn't been there an hour before when we arrived. They made every driver breathe into a plastic bag, then squeezed their air into a gauge that measured alcohol content. Jeff passed, of course. He'd never drive when he shouldn't. But it's experiences like this, in a foreign country too, mind you, that make you go, phew!