Onward to Alsace!

This is one of our driving tours where we move every day or stay a couple of days  before moving.

After a night in Koln (Cologne) we are setting up camp in the Rhine castle Hotel auf Schoenberg, familiar to readers by now, as we visited it recently on the occasion of picking up my new car in Munich back in 2003.

Our familiar turret room at the top of the castle.

The view from the bedroom window. The hotel is almost 1,000 feet above the Rhine and this is what is behind it.

Ciaran and I enjoy a beer on the tiny balcony. This is a wonderful place to relax, unlike any other. Late afternoon with the sun getting low on the horizon. The only thing we can hear this high up are the birds nesting in the castle walls and trees and the sound from the trains that run on both sides of the Rhine.

 Barges sail by day and night. The beers are free, which is cause for celebration!

Looking down on the castle walls. The Rhone river is on the other side of those distant meadows, maybe 25 minutes drive. It's a much quieter river for freight traffic.

An ancient tower near our room stands in ruins. The castle was built between 1100 and 1149 AD.

Carol and I pose for Ciaran the photographer 

We stayed in the castle overnight and had a marvelous  dinner in the nearby town of Bacharach, eaten outdoors on a quiet street in that beautiful small town, known for it's vineyards. No tourists!

Next morning we drove down the hill to a supermarket below to get some snacks for our drive later to Alsace in Eastern France on the border with Germany.  We still had a fine morning ahead and after a great German breakfast buffet in the hotel we set out for a drive to show Ciaran Burg Eltz.....

Now we could return to the hotel to pack our luggage and load up the car for our 5 hour trip to Alsace. We took a few last looks at the Rhine from our bird's eye view. We would drive along it for 30 miles or so before heading inland towards France.

As someone who loves to drive it was a pleasure to spend 5 hours (with a few stops for coffee) driving through unknown territory towards a country that I love but haven't spent nearly enough of my life in. I wish someone had been videotaping it. Normally I would run a video camera myself-something I have done on many drives in the western USA but abroad I need to keep my wits about me and both hands on the steering wheel.

On our last coffee stop before our destination we were in France and I had the distinct joy of being able to place our orders in French, a language I love and which I knew would come in useful one day.

We were staying overnight in the tiny village of Turckheim but once we had dropped our luggage at our hotel there (Hotel Deux Clefs) we drove the short distance to the closest city-Colmar which is notable for it's canal and this area known as la Petite Venice. While  Ciaran and I sat at a sidewalk cafe (always my favorite place to be) drinking French beer we had a very nice waitress. I loved to hear her talk to the locals at the nearby tables and so when I needed an ashtray (and I always do) I asked her for one in French and we got to talking. I could hear some foreign accent though in her voice and asked her where she was from? Scotland! We dropped the French immediately and had a lively chat as we are from Northern Ireland with some Scots blood flowing in our veins. It just struck me as odd that I would meet someone with a common background and upbringing, here in Colmar, a city I had never even heard of before planning this trip.  Once Carol returned from her visit to a local museum where everything was spoken or written in French we went looking for a French brasserie for a nice dinner.

We spent a pleasant evening in Colmar eating outdoors in the warm evening weather, enjoying the musical sound of people speaking French all around us.  No wonder it is considered a Romance Language. The food was good (as expected). A wonderful evening. We drove back to the humble ancient hotel and were told by the owner when he let us in to listen out for the Nightwatchman singing later. Sure enough as we drifted off to a deep sleep he was singing in the small square before our hotel. Not something we hear everywhere we've stayed and it just added to the magic of France.

Our hotel was very basic in comparison to our usual lodgings. I chose it as I just wanted us to have the experience of staying in a small French village. It was very Spartan by American or German standards. I think it was about 400 years old. The floors weren't level and they creaked.

Turckheim, Alsace

Some shots of Turckheim. We drove into the village through this narrow archway in the tower. That's a stork's nest on top of the tower....the village is a haven for storks.

This is the small square in front of our hotel

The view from our bedroom window. Ciaran and I are waiting by the car. The luggage is already loaded. All that is missing is Carol. We are heading next to Rothenburg back in Germany. It's almost 300 miles but the weather looks nice for a drive....

Hope to see you there!