Category: ThrowbackThursday

The Adventure Continues

The past two Travel Tuesdays I’ve shared photos of our time in Frankfurt and traveling along the Rhine Gorge. Today’s visit is to Strasbourg and the Alsace Wine Region, the next stops on our adventure.

Arrival in Strasbourg

We woke Strasbourg and a beautiful morning. This fascinating city has a heavy German influence due to the several transitions between being French and German after numerous wars or invasions over the centuries. Strasbourg, a city listed on the Unesco World Heritage, boasts a history that goes back to Roman times.

Exploring the City

We strolled around the many lovely streets and the Petite France district, which had a unique charm with its half-timbered homes and abundant flowers. Our walk concluded at an amazing and immense cathedral, but we weren’t able to explore its interior. Following this walk around the city, we returned to our boat for a delicious lunch.

The Alsace Wine Region

Relaxed and ready to go again, we went on our next journey to the beautiful Alsace Wine Region, visiting the towns of Ottrot and Obernai. Ottrot, a quaint village, is home to the Fritz-Schmitt Winery. Antoine, the owner’s son, led us through a wine tasting where we sampled several white wines that are typical of the region, as well as a cabernet. While we did the tasting, we had a delightful conversation with some women from the St. Louis area. One of the charms of the river cruise is the opportunity to meet and mingle with new people since there are only about 150 cruisers on the boat.

A Visit to Obernai

Following the wine tasting, we traveled to the nearby city of Obernai. This beautiful town captivated us with its charm. We decided to break away from the organized tour to soak in the local atmosphere. We stopped at a local café, where we enjoyed some beer and coffee, and explored various small shops. The cobblestoned streets led us to tasty finds such as nougat, cookies, and chocolates. We even encountered a shop dedicated entirely to cheeses and sausages! However, we had to leave this charming town and head back to meet the bus for the return trip to the boat.

Onward to Our Next Adventure

Back on the boat, we took the opportunity to unwind and rest as we cruised to our next destination: Basel, Switzerland! More about our journey in Basel next week!

Thank you to Canva Magic Write for assistance with this blog post.

My family and I were blessed to be able to do a vacation to several countries along the Rhine when we did a river cruise last week. Over the next few Travel Tuesdays I’m going to share some stories about our adventures and photos of what we saw. For starters, we landed in Frankfurt in the morning and after dropping off our bags, walked all around to explore the sights. We started off with a visit to the home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German author, artist, and statesman. Seeing the home gave us an idea of how the well-connected lived in the 1800s and there was a nice museum with artwork attached to the home. After, we wandered through some shopping areas and also through a weekly farmer’s market. The market was filled with amazing produce and quite a few food, wine, and beer stands. It was so crowded, but we didn’t linger for long since we had to get back and get ready for our first ever visit to an Oktoberfest celebration. It was actually the first night of Oktoberfest in Frankfurt and because of that, everyone was dressed in traditional clothing. We tried our best to fit in and think we did an admirably job. What do you think? Oktoberfest was a blast. Lots of good food, namely some fantastic sausages, pretzels, mustard, spaetzle, and dumplings. We also had excellent beer, namely some wheat beer and lagers. Finally, the music and dancing! So much fun. Surprisingly a friend advised that two unexpected songs — Sweet Caroline and Country Roads by John Denver — are staples at German Oktoberfest celebrations. We had a lovely time that night. The next day we did some more exploring around Frankfurt before it was time to board the boat for our cruise up the Rhine. I’ll share more photos from the next leg of the trip next week!