At 10:30pm last night, we strolled in to the centre of town, along with what seemed like the whole of Obernai’s population and we mingled in the car park next to the city wall. There was a live band playing rather Germanic sounding music and lots of people were waltzing around in front of the stage in pairs. There were beer stalls, ice cream, candy floss, balloons and glow-stick stalls, jumping castles and people everywhere having a good time. At 11pm the fireworks started, they were pretty impressive and lasted for quite a while. What seemed strange was that they were set to Rolling Stones music; maybe there isn’t any French music…..? Where were you, Rentacrowd….? When the fireworks ended, we meandered back to Le Parc Hotel and waited for Max to finish up a function and be able to join us for a late night drink in the bar. We chatted until nearly 1am and finally crawled off to bed.
I had a tear in my eye as we packed up our room and said our goodbyes to Max and his family. Their extreme generosity has been overwhelming, I’m not sure how we will ever be able to return as much kindness to them. Thank you so much. I had another tear in my eye as we drove out of their car park and headed west for our last week of travelling on this adventure.
We drove along the D1420 through Schirmeck and St Blaise, then the D424 through Senones. Beside us all the way, as we climbed over the Vosges mountain range, there were endless forests of pine trees. We finally reached the motorway heading north west and then pulled in to the town of Baccarat to stretch our legs. Being a Sunday, on a long weekend, the town was closed al la French style, so we gazed in some shop windows at the crystal ornaments, glasses and chandeliers, etc. that make this town famous. We pulled up for the night at Campéole Le Brabois on the outskirts of Nancy in the Lorraine region of France. Tomorrow we’ll catch the bus at the gate and head in to Nancy for a quiche lunch and a good plod around the city centre.
And I would now like to apologise for the complete lack of photos, we’ve spent the afternoon, doing two loads of washing and trying to get it dry in between rain showers, so today is the first day we haven’t taken a single photo; dang, we should have taken one of Max waving goodbye…..
So, if you’re not keen on reading and are in need of some pictures, there is page of Piglet photos available on a separate blog entry……
