A very pleasant night’s sleep with the window open wide and
church bells peeling in the distance. Up at the crack of dawn, or maybe it was
8:30, then down for a nice breakfast at 9. I tried not to eat too much as I’m
not planning to do too much today. I boiled my own egg, not firm enough, and
there were several nice cakes as well, not to mention Pain au Raison.
It was raining outside, as I'd expected from the weather reports so a good day to have a rest day. Back to the room to tidy up and catch up on washing and then
to start trying to catch up on the diary. I had a bit of a crack at the diary
but wasn’t in the mood so I finished watching the Midsomer Murder from last
night and then went for a walk around town. I visited the ruins of a citadel
that I can see on the top of a hill; there was howling a gale outside but
surprisingly well sheltered by the walls at the top.
I was reading the town history on some signs around town
(yes in English) and I was surprised to find out that the town house the French
Military Headquarters from mid-39 until the surrender in 1940. The headquarters
themselves were in my hotel, which at the time was called the Grand Hotel
Wangenbourg, now the Hotel Parc. So who know who else has worked/slept in my room?
I got an éclair and coke, a bit of energy, then turned TV on
and the Tour was on so I settled down to write the diary. I finished all but
one day, so a good session. I haven’t been able to get the laptop to connect to
the Internet so uploading will have to wait for tomorrow (or actually 10 days!).
Once I’d done that I went through all of the papers I’d been
collecting. I normally just shove everything interesting into a plastic bag and
then sort it out. So today I sorted it out and chucked out more than half, some
of it because it was water damaged. That done I was about to watch the Tour
when I noticed that Tourist Info was open (it’s closed from 12 to 3) so I
popped over to see if they had anything of interest and got a map for the
Alsace Wine Bike Route, I think I’ll use that tomorrow.
With all that done I relaxed and ‘watched’ the Tour for the
rest of the afternoon; there may have been one or two occasions when I dozed
off. Bodnar was caught with only 500m to go and then Marcel Kittel won again.
With the Tour over I booked a hotel in Selestat about 70ks
away and on the train line for tomorrow night and then did some more work on
the diary while I listened to Apres le Tour. Chris Froome speaks French well!
Then it was down for dinner. I’d checked out the other
hotels and there didn’t seem to be any real contenders, assuming the others are
even open.
I chose a simpler 3 course dinner tonight, Feuillete de
Champignon (Mushrooms like a mille feuille), Poulet au Riesling (local
speciality) with noodles and the Dessert du Jour, which happened to be a Grand
Marnier Soufflé like yesterday but not in orange peels this time. I also forgot
to mention yesterday that there is an amuse en bouche as well each day, but I
couldn’t work out either time exactly what it was J
I had the lovely bottle of Gewürztraminer above I was
thinking of trying a Riesling but then thought I should try a regional wine speciality to
go with the regional speciality. It was a Faller Reserve and was very nice. The
only shock was the price the next morning, I thought it was 18 but it was 31
Euro. (I think I looked at the wrong row J
)
Feeling a tad sloshed I went back to my room, packed a bit then read and bed, not so late for a change around 11.
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