France Day Three

I woke up this morning and felt as though it was Christmas morning. The excitement of spending another day in France was my best gift...this is what I saw when I leaned out my window.

The sun was already shining as we set out on the day's adventures. Nancy pointed out this spiderweb in one of the shop signs.

 This cute witch was a decal on a truck.

The local bakery had lemon tarts, which we bought to eat as dinner tonight (but won't be, because for the last two hours, we've been snacking and now are not hungry!

Here's Nancy with our rental car, which is a Citron C5. As you can see, the car has a good view of the vineyards.

We drove to Selestat, a town not too far down the road.  Today was their weekly market day, and we went in search of groceries, as we plan to cook later in the week.

 There were lots of cute dogs at the market, and lots of good food, too!

Here are some of the famous French roasted chickens.  We bought one, along with small potatoes that were roasted underneath the chickens.

 Here is the chicken trio...they helped us make our selections!

We purchased a chicken, potatoes, radishes, lettuce, bananas, tomatoes, shallots, two loaves of bread, haricot verts, and fresh spaetzele for less than twenty Euros! After loading up the car, we stopped and checked out the grapes at one of the many neighboring vineyards.  Here, you can see Castle Haute-Koenigsberg in the mist on top of the mountain.

These are grapes from a nearby vineyard. I sampled a few, and they tasted amazing!

Driving to Kaysersberg for lunch, we saw these vintage Citron 2CVs climbing up the hill to Riquewihr.

Kaysersberg is known for being the birthplace of Albert Schweitzer.  It's a beautiful city, so we walked a bit before finding the restaurant Nancy had selected for lunch.

We ate at Le Winstub du Chambard.  The restaurant is a part of a small hotel.  The chef, Olivier Nasti, is a prize-winning chef, and was appointed an MOF in 2007 (given to the craftspeople who are the best at what they do). We ate entirely too much, but the food was exquisite. The restaurant is Michelin-starred, and not your typical winstub.  I had a small salad with the best onion tart ever, followed by sandron (a very mild fish) in a mushroom and Gewurztraminer sauce with noodles.  Dessert was a raspberry sorbet with raspberry eau du vie.  I'll be dieting for the rest of my life after returning home next month!

 To partially negate the calories, we walked around the town afterwards, enjoying the afternoon.

Back in the car, we set our GPS for the little village of Niedermorschwihr, home of Christine Ferber.  That's a whole different story...this post has gotten way too long.  I'll be blogging Part Deux soon, so stay tuned!