Escape to (or from) Monkey Mountain

The highlight of our Sunday...

After making fun of Joe for more than a year about wanting to play with Monkeys, we finally went to Monkey Mountain in the Vosges. Think big forest with a fence with lots of monkeys roaming around. At first it kind of had a little Jurassic Park feeling that we were being watched, but once we were inside it was pretty tame.

Fortunately there was no inappropriate touching from Joe (like he has apparently done in the past with monkeys from Brazil), but there was one incident where a monkey did escape from the huge area. Patrick saw the monkey running for the gate and tried to slam the door, but unfortunately there was an 8 year old child in the way. Monkey runs between child's legs, and you have a couple of extra hours work for the park attendants to go find the monkey.

Birds of Prey

As part of our group activity on one Sunday, Joe set up an afternoon where we went to see Birds of Prey up in an old castle. Everybody went, including Andrea's parents who were in town visiting. It was actually cooler than I thought it would be, since we saw tons of birds that we never can see up close flying around.

The setting was pretty nice too - high up on a mountain above Kintzheim.

Project Cheese: 44%

Yeah, I've hit 44% of all AOC cheeses. Between picking up a couple of Jim's house the other night, and a stop into the now reopenned (after vacation) 'Le Cloche au Fromage' - I've kicked off several more cheeses. Alas, I lost my lookup sheet, but I think we have Fourme d'Ambert, Maroilles Lesire, and God knows what else. And yes, if I'm not lactose intolerant by the end of this exercise, I never will be.

Flowers of the Week

Again, not too good with the naming of flowers, but I think these are Asters - at least that's what I asked for with a french accent, and it seemed to work.

Sunday Lunch at the Auberge

Duck, duck, goose.

In a secondary project (see 'Cheese Project') to visit as many local Auberges as possible, Patrick, Jim, Cindy (new visitor, more on that later), Jill, Chris, and I all went to an Auberge up in the Vosges. Never really saw (or smelled) so many ducks in my life, but it was worth it. They made their own munster cheese and the ducks were really beyond fresh - Patrick even commented that it was probably the best duck he's ever had (and he's had a lot of good duck in the past year).

Raku from Bitscheim

Sorry, I'm sure I've spelled the town in Alsace wrong, but I can't ask Patrick because he's already told me five times last week. Regardless, we went up to a place very close to Souffleinheim (home of Alsatian pottery) and went to a town that specialized in another style.

Didn't actually buy that style of pottery, and instead went for some Raku. Photo probably doesn't do it justice, but it requires a lot of light to show it off well.

Flowers of the Week

And yes, I have no idea what these are called - I think they're Chinese paper Lanterns, but that would be too easy. Unfortunately I bought them from a different vendor than usual, because the usual one was busy with a rather time-consuming customer in front of me - and I had to move on. Granted we were running a little late that day and it was crowded, but I still don't understand how a frenchmen can spend 15 minutes picking out 5 stems of Lillies - dude, they're Lillies - pick one and let's move on.

Monthly T-Shirt Contest

And we have another entry into the "Oh my God, I can't believe he wore that to work" T-Shirt Contest here in Fegersheim. Long time readers will remember the basic rules of the contest in order to have your T-Shirt entered in the competition (but I'll recap for the new people).

1. T-Shirt must be worn to work.
2. Must have a witness or a photo of the T-Shirt.

Bonus points are awarded if T-Shirt would cause an immediate expulsion from Lilly properties if worn in the US.

I'm still working on the details of the winning prizes (to be announced at the end of warm weather), but no doubt it will involve something with the Lilly Red Book.

Again, Stephane continues to perform (you may remember him from last month's Care Bear fame) with this month's entry.

Bordeaux

Technically this was as close to vacation as we got in August. As the french were taking off two weeks at a time, followed by two weeks in the office, and then another two weeks - we just went to Bordeaux for five days.

We did have a lot of fun though . . .

Bordeaux: Wines of St. Emillion

First stop in the land of really expensive red wine was St. Emillion, which is on the north side of the river and inland a little bit. The entire area is on one huge chalk plateau. So the one vineyard we went to had a huge carved out wine cave under their vines - I'm thinking the floor area would have been at two football fields.

We picked up three bottles from different years of the same winery in order to taste the different harvests in detail.

We also walked around the town of St. Emillion and picked up some Merlot vines - have no idea if they will survive. Alas, the one day it baked in car's back window and the trip home in an overpacked suitcase did not make them very happy - but we'll see.