Sunday April 27-Thursday May 1
France
One of the great parts about our trip is when family and friends come over from the U.S. to visit us. No offense to other visitors, but our daughter, Bailey, the most important visitor of all, (I’m pretty certain that includes me) arrived on April 27th. I knew I missed her, but didn’t realize how much until I started crying when I saw her at the airport.
When traveling across time zones, we find it best to fight through the time difference on day one. While Bailey had already been awake and travelling for two days, she was a trouper and stayed up until French bedtime. Since she needed to keep moving, we decided to visit the Domaine Weinzaepfel winery on her first day. The 70,000 bottles produced every year by Domaine Weinzaepfel are served in Michelin starred restaurants in France. It is always a treat for us to get to enjoy a bottle (even more of a treat to go to the cellar, built in the early 1600s, and drink more than one bottle.) Our French cousins Mark, Kathy, Audrey and Loic Weinzaepfel gave us such a warm welcome. Wine tastings here are fantastic as the wine is outstanding and Audrey provides so much helpful background information about the winery, the grapes, and the wine making process.
Beautiful wine barrel
All new visitors must visit Paul’s favorite village, Kaysersberg, so we headed there for a day. We returned to my favorite hiking trails at Lac Vert. We also visited the town of Ungersheim, from where the Weinzapfel family emigrated to the US. We wanted Bailey to be able to see this important part of our family history. (I really think her willingness to visit Ungersheim was less about family history and more about the boulangerie she had heard great things about.)
On Wednesday, we visited another ferme auberge, Glasborn Linge. A ferme auberge, translated to English is “Farm Inn,” is a restaurant on a farm that serves farm to table meals. ( My favorite type of restaurant in France). We have dined at 3 in our travels, and the meals are always delicious and hearty.
This location was particularly interesting as it is situated in a World War I battle area. You can still see the impact of the war on the landscape with trenches and shell craters. We visited the Linge 1915 Memorial Museum. Over 6000 men died in the Battle of Linge. We hiked through the WW1 trenches. This was my first time to actually be inside a trench. The maze of trenches was very disorienting and made me a little claustrophobic. Imaging that men lived in these trenches during the war, with the constant threat of bullets, shells, and grenades, in the heat, cold and the rain…the misery is unfathomable to me. Every time I visit a sight like this, my heart hurts. When you visit a small town and read the names on a memorial to those lost in a war, you realize how many families lost multiple members, sons or cousins. Imagine a small town losing basically an entire generation of young men. Heartbreaking.
https://www.ferme-auberge-glasborn.fr/
https://linge1915.eu/en/histoire-bataille-linge-alsace-vosges
Thursday was on to happier thoughts as we visited a new town for me. Ribeauvillé Is a gorgeous village filled with flowering wisteria, a flowing stream, shops and cafes. All three of us did our best to help out the local economy by shopping.
I am going to leave the rest of this week for next week’s blog, as those days are the start of our time in Germany.
New To Do’s this week:
- Battle of Linge sites including the Linge 1915 Memorial Museum
- Beautiful town of Ribeauvillé
Follow along on My52ToDo.com – What can I do in 52 weeks.
My52ToDo.com 