Our Trip To France

Bon jour, Mon Amis!

How are you all doing?  I've missed you all!  Hubby and I returned yesterday afternoon from France, after spending 10 wonderful days there!  We had such a great time, and saw so many beautiful sights, that my head is still spinning!  I took a ton of photos, and will share some here with you today.

 After landing at the Charles de Gaule airport in Paris, we picked up our rental car and headed to the Alsace region, which is in the north east corner of France, right near the German border.  It was our first time visiting Alsace, and it was even more beautiful than we imagined!  We spent the last 4 days of our trip in Paris (I'll be sure to share photos of that in the next week), and as much as we love it there, the Alsace region was actually the highlight of our entire trip!

Since we were so near the German border, all of the little villages not only had German sounding names, German inspired food, but had beautiful half timber German style architecture that we love so well.  Each and every village that we visited was just as beautiful as the last!  The shuttered windows, lace curtains, quaint architecture, and gorgeous flowers made it feel as if we had stepped right into little fairy tale villages! The one above, Dambach-la-Ville, where we stopped for lunch, was an adorable little medieval walled village. 

 Another one of our favorite towns was called Obernai, where I snapped the rest of these photos.

 Aren't the buildings amazing?  Just look at all of the details, such as the neat corbels below.

 You would have loved the pretty flowers, too! One little shop sold these pretty gingerbread cookies.

 I couldn't resist taking a picture of hubby as a stork!  The white stork is considered good luck in this region, so we saw the stork motif just about every where.  They spend their winters in Africa, then migrate north to breed.  I thought it was interesting to learn that the stork population has really dwindled, largely in part to pesticides, but thankfully they have been working hard to save them, and have been creating breeding centers to increase their population.

 Check out their giant nests!  We saw several of these thru out the region, always on the roofs of buildings.  How neat is that?

 You know how much I love blue, so I was really excited to see these pretty bright shutters!

 The last day we were in Obernai, they had a street market, where you could buy everything from fresh fruits and vegetables, to hot pretzels (more German influence!) to furniture and clothes. 

 I thought this little van, that was outfitted with a built in rotisserie, was so much fun!  The French are really into their roasted chickens, and the smell walking by the van was amazing!

 The Alsace region is known for their fine wines, and we just so happened to luck out and be there during their harvest.  I wish that I'd gotten some pictures of the tractors that drove right thru the little villages.  They would pull wagons with big bins filled with grapes.  The sight of John Deere tractors, so common there, always makes me think of my Dad, who was a farmer all of his life.  He loved his John Deere's!

Driving along the country side, there were vineyards as far as you could see.  Such a pretty sight!  Notice the ruined castles, both at the top of the hill, and to the left in the distance?

We had such a wonderful trip, but it feels oh so good to be home!  We really missed our sweet little Emily, who was so excited to see us when we picked her up at the "pet resort" yesterday!  And of course we missed our own bed.  And I missed little things like Diet Coke, and a good cup of coffee!  Their Coke and Diet Coke taste totally different then ours (they use different sweeteners), and I don't like it at all.  Can you believe it, a glass of wine is cheaper than Coke in a restaurant?  Hubby ordered a coke in a little cafe in Paris, and it was 5 Euros for a very small glass bottle!  So that's about $6.25 with the exchange rate, yikes!  As for coffee, they don't use cream at all in theirs, just low fat milk (I gotta have my cream!).  Maybe that's part of the reason you don't see many overweight French people!  Speaking of which, after all of that eating and drinking, today is the day I am starting my _iet (I never use the word "diet", haha!).

I'm linking up with Common Ground for Vintage Inspiration Friday

Hope you have a great weekend!  I'll share more of our trip soon!