July 22

We’re in Strasbourg. It has been up and down, really. The city is nice, and it’s fun to be in France. We arrived on Thursday evening and were immediately shown to our rooms. Unfortunately, these rooms came with dead friends that were smashed on the wall and left there. Not just one or two, but multiple creatures—in the hallway, the bedrooms, etc. When someone tells you that you’re staying in a Chateau, make sure you find out more information. Gina and I shared the same immediate (some would say over) reaction, which was to head to the Holiday Inn that I saw on the way into the city. However, it was after midnight, and we couldn’t get a taxi where we are without a 15 minute walk to the bus station……I won’t go into detail, let’s just say that we stuck it out on the third floor with no air in the middle of a heat wave. Thankfully, I ended up talking to Lynne and Carlos who helped me gain perspective and make a plan. On Friday morning, things started looking up.

At 10 a.m. we arrived at Domaine Rémy Gresser for our first tasting of Alsatian wines. It was a small operation, and M. Gresser himself led the tour and the tasting. He was obviously very passionate about his wines, and his enthusiasm was contagious. We tasted seven wines, including Gewürztraminers, Rieslings, and two of his Grand Cru wines. None of us left empty handed. Later that day we visited a more corporate operation, Dopf. They get their grapes from several producers to produce their wines. While the woman who led the tour was very kind and knowledgeable, she seemed to lack the passion of Gresser, who knew his wines from the planting of the vines, the harvesting of the grapes, and through production and bottling. And there was a really cute dog that we named Le Woof.

After this morning's visit to learn how things work at Kieffer, a local caterer, we went into Strasbourg. One of the chefs took a few of us to a great little restaurant on the river called Maison des Tanneurs. It was my most recent meal, and if I died right now, I will have died happy. It was perfect. We, of course, ordered the foie gras, and then shared onion tart, salad, choucroute (a local specialty of sauerkraut with multiple types of pork product) and kugelhopf ice cream. Kugelhopf refers to the fact that it is shaped in the form of a cake-like bread that is popular in the region…I’ll post a picture.

Gina and I are now living on the first floor with Sarah and Katie. We moved some furniture around and are turning lemons into lemonade! And the only dead bugs are the ones that we kill.



There is some wine happening here.


I liked this so I took a picture of it.


This is a traditional kugelhopf cake. Our dessert for lunch was ice cream that had some sort of crust on it shaped like this with raspberry and vanilla sauces. In the little well in the middle of the cake, there was some sort of brandy.