Walls in Germany

So, I am now caught up on my blog. I hope to not let it go this long without blogging again. I love keeping track of places we have been, things we have done, and restaurants where we have dined! I often use our blogs to make recommendations or plan other trips. So, I need to be better about keeping this one up! Yesterday, we spent the morning at a couple of vide greniers in France. We bought a metal table for our balcony and a couple of kitchen items. As always, it was fun! It was also a beautiful day so we decided to go for a hike in the afternoon. I found a hike on the app Komoot that looked appealing and was only about 30 minutes away from our house. It turned out to be a more difficult hike than expected because it was a STEEP incline the first half, but it was beautiful so we just took our time and enjoyed the view. Also, we knew since we were going up that we would be going down at some point so that was motivating. During the hike, there was water flowing and many bridges to cr...

At N26 (where I work), you have to use your leftover vacation days from the year before by March 31st or you lose them. I had four days and we wanted to go somewhere. We thought about lots of options but settled on a road trip to Prague and Salzburg. Bucky had never been to either place, so we thought it would be a good adventure.  When planning it, we decided to stop in Grafenwohr which is where I lived with my family from 1976 to 1979. It is on the route to Prague and we thought it would be fun to walk down memory lane. Unfortunately, we couldn't get onto the Post, but we wandered around the old town, saw the famous water tower from afar, and visited the museum.  We stayed at a hotel in Eschenbach, a town outside of Graf, so visited there too. We had a great time and enjoyed the best Indian food outside of India at Ganesha , a lovely restaurant in Grafenwohr. The next day we headed to Prague and stopped at the Pilsner Urquell brewery in Plzen, Czech Republic. Of course, we ...

Bucky read The Seine: The River that made Paris by Elaine Sciolino a couple of years ago and has wanted to find the source of the Seine ever since. So, guess what we did? Yep, we decided to go find it. It is located in Source Seine, about 30 kilometers northwest of Dijon. Interestingly, this spot has been owned by the city of Paris since 1864. We joked about texting Lucie when we arrived there and saying we were in Paris (which we were), but decided against it since we were still three hours away by car! The source was really pretty - very peaceful and powerful. We captured some of the pure water of the origin of the Seine in our water bottle and drank it! We also threw coins into the grotto and made wishes!  We ended up staying the night in Logis Relais de la Souce Hotel  which was lovely. We had dinner there that night and it was a little too fancy for us, but it was a fun experience. The town where the hotel is located, however, was the real find. Saint-Seine-l'Abbaye ...

Bucky and I LOVE to go to vide greniers or flohmarkts as they are called in Germany. We scour the websites weekly to see where we may head on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings to treasure hunt. In early January 2023, we saw a flohrmarkt advertised in Halsbach im Kinzigtal which is just about 40 minutes driving from us. So we decided to head that way. The flohmarkt was cute although we didn't find anything we couldn't live without! (Which is probably a good thing!) We did, however, fall in love with the town. The buildings were beautiful and there was a stream running through the town. It was raining, but we decided to walk to the next village on hiking path and it was lovely! Here are just a few quick pics taken on our lovely walk!  The water was amazing! Who doesn't love a water wheel? This was some sort of fairy tale display. We didn't quite get it but documented it anyway!  

According to Wikipedia, the galette des rois tradition is " a cake traditionally shared at Epiphany, on 6 January . It celebrates the arrival of the Three Wise Men in Bethlehem. Compo sed of a puff pastry cake, with a small charm, the  fève , hidden inside, it is usually filled with frangipane, a cream made from sweet almonds, butter, eggs and sugar." Our lovely friends and neighbors, Geraldine, Tom, Max and Lea invited us up to their apartment to celebrate the tradition together. So, the big deal is to have the  fève in your slice of cake and guess who had it? Yep! Moi!! The one that was hidden was a little dog, but the kids collect them and did not want to part with the dog so they fished out another  fève from the cache (a little crown they didn't like) and I took that home as my lucky charm!  Me with my crown and (original) fève!