Strasbourg and Mulhouse

On Saturday we were invited to a friend's parents' house in Mulhouse, France for the night. Many of Martin's labmates from the ETH were there and we all had a nice dinner followed by much merriment and not much sleep.

Mulhouse is only about 2.5 hours from Bad Dürkheim but we still decided to break up the drive by stopping in Strasbourg for lunch (which was exactly halfway to Mulhouse). I had never been to Strasbourg before and Martin had but he didn't remember it so it was a worthwhile stop.

I apologize because I don't think the iphone did any justice to the Strasbourg cathedral. I might rank it within my top 5 cathedral interiors ... after the Venice cathedral that's filled with gold mosaics and St Peter's and the teeny tiny Sainte Chapelle in Paris. And I'm probably forgetting a few others but my favorite churches are not the point of this blog post. What was neat about the Strasbourg cathedral was all the stained glass in it - not just in the bottom of the church but also along all the windows in the very top of the church. Of course the iphone could not manage to capture any of that very well. So here are some pics of the outside and the inside of the cathedral:

There was a big Jesus in the church:

And I lit a candle for my mom. They were orange which I took as a sign:

I'm trying to capture the stained glass in the top and bottom of the church. It's all washed out here but I want to give you an idea of it all. Just add beautiful colors to it in your minds. It was really beautiful with the sunlight streaming through the windows at the top:

It is also interesting to note that this cathedral only has one spire. It was supposed to have two but they ran out of money after they built the first one and so they stopped. So the front of the cathedral is a bit off balance:

The awesome lunch we had at a completely packed restaurant near the cathedral. Martin had stag stew and I had chicken in a riesling sauce and of course since we were in the Alsace region we complimented our meals with some Alsacian wine:

And a picture of some of the cuteness of Strasbourg:

After Strasbourg we continued on to Mulhouse where we went for a little walk in the old part of town. We tried to go into the cathedral there but there was a mass going on so we couldn't.

This is a bit dark but the main square was really cute:

Our little dinner party with 16 people. Good thing the house was enormous! Not everybody's living room easily sits 16 for dinner with room to spare. And there was a pool and hot tub and sauna in the basement that we enjoyed after dinner as well.

Hiking Deidesheim-Wachenheim-Deidesheim

This past Sunday we went for a little 9-mile hike through the forest and vineyards near Bad Dürkheim. The town just to the south of Bad Dürkheim is called Wachenheim and the hike started a few more towns south of that in Deidesheim. From there it looped up to Wachenheim through the forest, then back south to Deidesheim through the vineyards. So you got a little bit of everything in this hike.

Here's a little shack and picnic bench in the middle of the woods:

A little beyond the picnic bench we found a little restaurant where Martin had some new wine:

New wine is made by harvesting the grapes, mushing them into juice, then letting it ferment for a week or two. It's pretty sweet, like drinking juice but with a little kick. You don't drink a lot of it because it's obviously high in sugar and calories but a little glass just hits the spot.

After our break for new wine and lunch of packed sandwiches we climbed a tower above the little restaurant to get a view of the surrounding hills to the west and the towns to the east:

I'm not sure why they planted trees in rows like you can see in the above picture. Maybe when they got done planting all the vineyards in perfect rows they decided to keep it up in the forest by planting trees in rows. That's my current theory. The picture below is looking east towards the vineyards and towns.

We found these really pretty mushrooms:

A pic of some trees:

Finally at Wachtenburg castle (in Wachenheim)! Still have a ways to go after this though ... plus we can see our apartment from this castle, it's so close, but we had to turn south instead of north and head back to Deidesheim and our car instead.

Martin had some real wine at Wachtenburg castle. They served it to him in a little schörle glass instead of a wine glass probably because the castle was absolutely packed full of people enjoying the beautiful day and drinking wine and the kitchen had run out of wineglasses. It was so packed that we had to sit in the tent area where there was no view of anything but tent walls and people. But it was okay because we had cookies and wine:

I like that everybody is outdoors when the weather is nice on a Sunday afternoon instead of sitting inside watching football. Americans should learn from this example.

And I got a pretty decent shot of Wachtenburg castle from between two houses after we came down the hill into Wachenheim: