After departing the champagne region, we decided to trace the steps of Tyler's grandfather John Smith during WWII. He entered the war in Italy, but after several months invaded the south of France and trekked through the Alsace region pushing back the German army.
Our first point to find was St. Marie - a village set in the Vosges mountains that had a difficult and narrow pass at the top of the mountain. The 36th Infantry Division made a bold surprise attack and easily took what was considered by the Germans an almost impenetrable pass.
After St. Marie, his division attacked Selestat and spent Christmas of 1944 in Strasbourg before crossing into Germany. It was so neat to pass through the same villages with some of the same buildings that had been there over 70 years ago.
After exiting the mountains, we wound through the foothills past unending vineyards and medieval villages towards our destination in Colmar.
After checking in to our cute little house, we decided to make our way into the city for dinner. We wandered around for a while getting the lay of the land and finally settled on a restaurant. The cuisine of the area is heavily influenced by Germany since it had been part of Germany before.
After dinner, we started on one of Rick Steve's walking tours around the city, finding all sorts of fascinating buildings and stories along the way. By about 9 pm, the kids were about to drop, so we headed back home to crash.
The next day, we picked out a couple of villages that we wanted to see and started around 1000 after picking up some pastries at the local bakery. Our first stop was a village that had been voted the most beautiful village in France, by the French...twice: Eguisheim.
A small and compact village with two concentric rings of incredibly quaint houses (one inside and one outside the original medieval wall) surrounding a unique square.
At this point, we are writing this blog about two months after the trip, so the details are a little fuzzy. So, the rest of these vignettes are not necessarily in the right order. Our friends at Ramstein, Hoss and Amber Harold had recommended we visit Montagne des Singes (monkey mountain) that was in the region.
The park is a small mountains side enclosure with about a hundred macaque monkeys lounging around in a sparse forest environment.
When we entered, we were all given a handful of popcorn to feed the monkeys. There were several rules such as hold the popcorn at arm's length, don't let your children run off by themselves and potentially be a target for an aggressive monkey, and don't feed any mom's carrying babies.
The kids had a blast feeding several monkeys in what was a slightly surreal and calm environment. Toward the end of our circuit through the park, the staff had a feeding session and brought out a bucket of fruit and vegetables. It was interesting to see the monkeys start being aggressive and territorial towards each other after seeing them so calm previously.
Another trip took us up to Chateau Koenigsburg, a massive mountain-top castle that dominated the valley skyline for miles.
Having been rebuilt in the 1800s by the romantic Germans, it was an impressive and beautiful castle.
Callum photo-bombed Claire's picture of mom & dad showing his sometimes playful mischief.
We sampled several villages in the Alsace region including Riquewihr and Ribeauville. All of the villages had incredible charm and felt like a step back in time.
On a different afternoon, we spied a couple of ruined castle towers up on the mountain and drove up to investigate. While Claire dozed in the back, Cal brought his new toy crossbow and explored the Tres Chateaus with Tyler. It was quite the impressive ruins.
Alsace was an incredible destination with quite a bit of variety for continental Europe. The food was excellent, the wine was unique and the scenery was a fantastic combination of castles, vineyards and picture-perfect medieval villages frozen in time.
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