France Day 2

Friday, September 30, 2011

The day started out slow. I just could not wake up. But finally did to look out at the most gorgeous view. Breathtaking. Oh, and a chicken. And sheep. Yep, those are our neighbors. And the chicken is quite friendly. The sheep are a bit stand offish though.

Our first goal of the day is to go back to Colmar to put my name on the rental car agreement. Luckily mom brought her Garmin, although she was giving us fits this morning. The office was not quite in the center of town and man there was a lot of right turn, right turn, re-calculating....and wouldn't you know it. We got there at 1 pm. There is an interesting tradition, rule, habit, that most places are closed between 12 and 2 pm. Yep, that is the deal. Closed. So we did what they we doing, we went to have lunch. A litlle more right turn, right turn, re-calculating and we almost got to our destination. We wanted to go to an open air market next to the Dominican church. Well we kind of got lost one too many times and Garmin couldn't really keep up with us. I'm still saying we were having satellite problems. But I finally just said enough, let's park here. This looks nice.

We walked about two blocks down, saw a walk street to the left and lo and behold, a church. We assume it was the one we were looking for. It makes us feel better.

The courtyard area was great, with lots of shops and a few cafes.

We got a recommendation for a good seafood restaurant and they did not steer us wrong. We debated sitting out front to watch the people go by but opted for inside. Instead they lead us to the most beautiful back patio. Wonderful vine canopy that was red with fall color, beautiful planters surrounding us, quiet and quintessentially French.

Mom got the whole sole and they filleted it at the table. I got mussels and of course pommes frites. France has the best french fries. I think our waitress panicked a bit that we didn’t know much French, she passed us off to the owner. He didn’t know much English but we managed. It was delicious. Oh, and I asked for a salad and they brought out the same thing we had the night before, with the celery root, beets, carrots and turnip. Yum.

We strolled for a bit after lunch and I was a picture taking fiend. Beautiful fodder for it as well.

We then headed back toward 'home' and on to Beauville. A very high end linen store and factory. Mom got a few gifts but I resisted the temptation to buy just for the sake of buying. Yay me.

I pulled over on the way home to take pictures of this breathtaking home on the side of the mountain, with of course, grape vines surrounding it. It was quite imressive with overeflowing window boxes in the dozen or so windows. I think there was a castle up above it as well.

We stopped by the little market to get a quiche for dinner and pain au chocolat for breakfast. We planned out what we wanted to see for the next few days and what was near each other to take advantage of the area. We have monkeys on the list. And storks too!

Mom is now falling asleep on the not quite comfortable couch next to me. Time to rouse her and off to bed. Oh, she loved the boggle I have on the iPad and the fact that we could have dinner music too. Even though I am truly unplugged, with no connectivity, technology is still nice to have around. Especially since we both talked about journals but didn't find any today. Mine is here. Voila!