Has anything ever happened to you that defied explanation?
Me too! I had finished up my dose of reading for the day,
and it was late. But no matter how much I kind of wanted to have my
smoothiesnacktime and get some sleep, I went on ahead and met my friends at The
Capital, which has a Guiness Record of some sort for widest beer selection (I
might
have made that up) {I will leave that up to you, reader} So we had two
beers (both of which were new for me and both equally delicious) then we
decided to have some whiskey by the river. To “top if off” we went for some
pizza. While enjoying our pizza, Antonia went to make friends with the owner
and learn why they changed locations. During her venture, a semi-familiar face
joined James and I at our table. After a few looks, I remembered him as the
owner of an Italian restaurant we had visited a month or so ago for some
limoncello. He sat for a while, bought us all a Stella, made us laugh, had a
piece of our pizza, then invited us to his restaurant to make us pasta. Before
ya knew it, we were on our way to La Rotonda and upon arrival, he pulls out
more stellas for us and flips on some music. In no time, he had whipped up
probably the best penne and tomato meat sauce I’ve had in years, topped with
basil and parmesan (obviously), drizzled with jalapeno oil. It took some perseverance, but I scraped
every bit from my plate with my bread. After all, living several years with
Ferracano had trained me for this. As if this weren’t enough, he opened another
round of Stellas then showed us how he makes fresh pizzas which were also
superb. When the time came to head home, he wouldn’t accept any money, and my claim
hours earlier for an infinite appetite for food was proven false.
Sometimes things happen, and less questions are better.
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| Strasbourg, France (Photo credit: Beatrice Thompson) |
A few days later, some friends and I rented a car and drove
to a cottage in Vienville, France. I
drove the Mercedes to Strasbourg, France where we picked up Meredith. She and Maxim
showed around, to the beautiful cathedral and to enjoy some French cuisine for
dinner. We split a bottle of wine and I tried a dish called Rilette De Canard,
a duck meat spread on good toast. It was alright, made better paired with some
of my bud’s zucchini and cheese version of the dish. We shared. From there, we
took on the last leg of our trip, arriving at our cottage around 11 at night.
We really had a nice time: reading, writing, drinking,
sleeping, and eating extraordinarily well.
Being in the Lorraine Forest area, we did some hiking too; some more than others.
On our last day there, a few of us took the day to visit Colmar.
We picked just about the perfect time to visit this town: before the summer tourist rush, yet just in time for pleasant weather and vibrant Easter decorations. I was awestruck by the entire day, the brilliant, even eccentric environment and also my absolutely lovely companions, it was just about too many awesome things to handle at once.
From there we went to visit a vineyard. This company, The Adam’s Family, impressed me by the pride they took in the integrity of their product. They care for their wine such that rather than tilling their land with heavy machinery, they use horses. The bottle they sell their wine in has a design unique to their company, and no one else may use that design.
The following destination was a village called Riquewihr, a village with brilliant colors and medieval style where we bought treats and more wine. Our path through the town brought us by a patio where a group was loudly chanting. In one of the shops, we were asked if we were the ones invading the city for theweekend. We were not.
Before making our way home back home, we scaled up a grape vineyard embedded in a steep hill; we saw the whole village and then some from up top.
