LL 519, Road Trip Day 4

Sunday, August 15th. 

For breakfast, Laureva helped Mary make pancakes with fresh buttermilk from Austria. The recipe she uses takes butter rather than oil, uses both baking powder and soda, and adds egg yolks and whites separately for extra fluffiness. Mary also made a delicious berry sauce to go with. They were sinfully delicious. 

We played a few rounds of Sackapuss, which Mary and Ben gave the girls when we visited them in February 2020, then Mary and I made a bakery run and prepared picnic sandwiches with leftover fillings.

At 12pm, we headed off destination Château de Fleckenstein in northern Alsace (the north Vosges forest) along the German border. We arrived about 1pm and found a picnic table to eat our sandwiches with some drinks from the cafe. Then we started our visit. There was a twenty-one station challenge course that took us through the forest and the ruins of the chateau, teaching us about life in 1680. Fleckenstein is a 13th to 17th century fortification built in and around a giant rock. It was blown up by soldiers of Louis XIV in 1680. The girls were really into charging ahead and solving the puzzles. The whole visit took us about three hours.

Our next stop was Château de Cleebourg for some Alsace wine tasting. It was about a forty-five minute drive from Fleckenstein. When we arrived, we discovered they were having a wine fair. That turned out well because although there were quite a lot of people, everything was set up outside and people and stands were spaced out. We bought a bottle of champagne and a case of local Riesling. The girls picked out two jars of jam. One for Marie-Elisabeth with blueberries and grapes, one for us with pineapple and rosemary.

On the way back to Strasbourg, we had to go through a storm. It rained quite heavily for a bit and there were lightning flashes. By the time, we arrived back in Schiltigheim around 7, it had passed here, fortunately. We walked straight to our dinner reservation at Brasserie Michel Debus. The patio was closed due to the recent storm, but they had all the doors open and it was quite spacious and with good air circulation. We sampled some of their beers, and enjoyed flammenkuche and Alsacian fare. Sylvain had pig cheek stew which he said was quite good. He's only ever had beef cheek stew before. I had potato pancakes with smoked salmon and a sour cream and chive sauce. Quite tasty. For dessert, we shared an apple flammenkuche flambeed in calvados (apple brandy).

Back home, Sylvain and Ben watched the end of the OM-Bordeaux soccer game while Mary, the girls and I played a French game called Mille Bornes. It's a card game in which you have to "drive" 1000 kilometers. You can get held up in your plans by other players who attack you with various types of accident cards.

For a nightcap, the adults sampled a smidgeon of blueberry mint ginger gin Mary and Ben brought back from Austria. It was quite tasty.

Our health passes were scanned everywhere: chateau, vineyard and restaurant. Local Covid stats are much better here than in our area. The Incidence Rate is 150 and the Positivity Rate around 2%, both below the national average. This region was hard hit at the start of the pandemic and they seem to have developed and applied coping strategies more than in our area. People are also reportedly more rigorous about following health guidelines. For example, we've noticed plexiglass installations in quite a few businesses, including in the bakery and aesthetically separating the tables at the restaurant. At restaurants, there are no longer paper menus. You scan a QR code and the menu comes up on your smart phone so you only touch your own things.

During our time here, we learned a bit more about Mary and Ben's Covid experience. They both caught it earlier in the year. February or March, I think. At the time, Ben had had his first dose, and he caught the South African variant from a patient he admitted at work when he was transferred to the Covid ICU ward for a time. He passed it on to Mary. He experienced slight fatigue and loss of smell.

We also learned recently that Sylvain's cousin Paul and his girlfriend Justine both had Covid a few weeks back. I imagine it must be the Delta variant. Paul was already fully vaccinated at the time. He caught it going out to a rooftop bar with his friends in Marseille. Apparently, the whole group of friends who often go out together came down with it.