Day 18–From Interlaken to the Alsace Region of France

Today we got up in the village of Lauterbrunnen and checked out of our wonderful accommodations at Hotel Oberland and headed north to France.

We have forgotten in many places, but we took some pictures of our room before we left.  I thought our toiletries set-up looked particularly organized too…

The view up and down the street in Lauterbrunnen from our hotel balcony:

We headed through Basel, Switzerland hoping to get a glimpse of a Swiss University.  We saw it, but everything was closed.  It was Saturday, during the summer, and today is a French National holiday (like our 4th of July).  We did see a swap meet on the main lawn of the University grounds .

oh, and Jack and I saw something we had never seen before at a hotel restroom – Pushbutton flush switches in the floor!

Of course, we had to hit a Starbucks since we hadn’t seen one in a few days – this ended up being lunch.

Then on up into France and into the Alsace region which is known for winemaking and cool villages.  We stopped at one called Eguisheim.  Grabbed a few photos and some postcards…Jack grabbed some FRENCH fries.

We then came on up to the village we are staying in tonight called Obernai.  We are again inside the old fortress walls.  Kim and I looked on some plaques and the inside wall of the village was constructed in the 1200s.

Pictures of this hotel room:

We had dinner here at a local restaurant and it was interesting.  Food was awesome, but service and atmosphere was the interesting part.

1. We started outside but the smoke was so bad at the table next to us we went in to ask if we could come inside.  It was non-smoking inside.  No one spoke English, but we made it inside and got a table.
2. There was English on the menu, so ordering was not too bad.
3. Paying at the end was interesting as one of our waitresses that didn’t speak English and did not know how to run the credit card machine.  We finally got that done.
4. Jack didn’t find the pocket door on the restrooms and thought the only doors on the restroom were old western slatted swinging doors.  So, he and Kim came back to the room to let Jack use our hotel bathroom.

After dinner, we had some gelato and came back to the room for a little bit before going to see the fireworks.

it is now midnight here and we think we are going to have a “down” day tomorrow.  We may look around this village some more, but mainly read and take a little break before heading to Paris and then home.

We have been reading from the book of Job before bed most nights.  We read Philippians and the kids wanted to read from Psalms too.

Good night everyone. 

-scott