When we woke up this morning we both still felt fat. Last night’s fabulous dinner was the biggest we have eaten while we have been travelling, but Max insisted we meet him in their beautiful, new breakfast room. Thankfully it’s a buffet service, so we only ate a couple of mouthfuls and then embarked on a tour of the hotel. It was amazing to hear how they have changed and extended so much since Grandma started the business, we had not realised the place was so extensive. As well as the indoor and outdoor pools and spa, there is a business lounge, conference rooms, a bowling alley, a function room, the restaurant, the breakfast room, a winstub which has lovely old photos of his grandma and great grandparents, a bar, a pool bar, a cigar room, a rooster room full of paintings and drawings and sculptures of roosters (his Dad loves them….it’s a French thing perhaps) and 62 bedrooms. It is a maze, going on and on, and round and round; we loved it all.
We also walked through the kitchens which were in full swing preparing for a function and lunchtime, it’s not an area that one usually gets to see, so it was marvellous to see behind the scenes. If anyone is considering a holiday in the Alsace, which we thoroughly recommend, then we would very highly recommend staying here at The Parc Hotel; it’s gorgeous. www.hotel-du-parc.com
We finally let Max get on with some work and we drove off, in his car again, south this time, down the motorway to Riquewihr. This is a Michelin three star and another ‘Les Plus Beaux’ village; it is a bit touristy, but it’s so lovely and we enjoyed ambling around taking yet more photos.
After that we drove back north to visit the Chateau du Haut Koenigsbourg which sits high up on a hill above the Alsace Wine Route Villages. It’s a wonderful old castle which has switched between being owned by the Germans and the French. After being a ruin for many years, it was given to the German Emperor and restored between 1900 and 1908, but was then handed back to France under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. This is such an interesting area with this constant moving between French and German ownership, but it still feels thoroughly Germanic to us.
To get back to Obernai we decided to continue on The Wine Route through endless, pretty, Alsatian villages until Rodney got too tired to take any more bendy roads and narrow cobbled streets. We passed so many cellar doors for, maybe more than a hundred, vineyards. Within one tiny village we counted seventeen vineyards on the road through; I don’t know how many more there may have been on the side roads. Every village is surrounded by vineyards and we are trying to comprehend how they can sell so much wine. Unfortunately, with Rodney driving, and me unable to have more than half a glass before gaining wobbly boots, not a drop passed our lips…..! However, as it is France’s National day (known to some of us as Bastille Day, but not to the French), we intend to wander down in to Obernai this evening for a drink and perhaps watch some fireworks. This seems like quite an appropriate way to end our visit to our only French friend Maxime in his home town. No doubt we will catch up with him again on our next ski trip.