IMMA has become more or less that; A place to bring new or recently dusted off camera gear for a stroll around the grounds. No cat photos and not a focus chart in sight. Just a few from this visit before I drag and drop the set into the abyss that is the 2011 archive.
A trip to Avondale park last year with Vlastik where I took the opportunity to use a few of the rolls of velvia in the fridge. I thought I’d get rid of the remaining slide film as my intention was to develop it then sell the Jobo CPE I bought a couple of years ago on ebay. I think I’ve had my fill of developing anything other than black & white and the Jobo, tanks, chemicals and all the E6 paraphernalia are just taking up space in the ‘junk room’. On that, if anyone is interested in buying a CPE plus, some tanks, spools and whatever else I’ve got, drop me a line.
One thing I’ve never quite managed is metering for scenarios like being in woods where you’re in & around different lighting situations. One minute we were in bright sunshine, then overcast, then under trees. As a result, quite a lot of the 5 rolls I think I shot that day are under exposed. I’ve dragged what I could out of them in scanning & post processing but alas, there’s only so much you can do. Pity, because one of the shots I really wanted was killed stone dead by poor metering, as you can see below.
What I captured compared to what I saw on the day almost made me lock the bronica up in a cupboard when I took the slides out of the tank. I believe I even said ‘I wish I had taken my 5D with me’. Another one below. I got the forest floor metered with some accuracy but sadly lost all the background. Let’s just say I meant to do it that way; Focusing the viewers attention on the tiniest of foreground rocks and not on all that messy shrubbery in the background.
Thankfully, and not to put me off shooting velvia again, most of the shots came out pretty much as intended. If that’s my skill/technique, a triumph of post processing or the hand of God during development is for the viewer to decide. It’s not too difficult to appreciate of the ease and forgiving nature of shooting digital when you come back from a day of film shooting and and up with crap. But that, of course, is an old story so don’t go sharply exhaling in exasperation and rolling your eyes at me just yet.
It does go right now and then and the film captures things in a way you only wished you could have seen them. While waiting for the sun to come back out I shot a couple of frames of this scene. The difference between this and the next shot, taken only about 3 seconds later, is amazing. Timing, or perhaps impatience to move on was on my side.
A low ISO film, a tripod, a cable release, ND filters and a river. No prizes for guessing what happens next. Vlastik may also have some mildly amusing photos of me getting into a precarious position on some slippery rocks and perhaps even more amusing photos of me trying to return to the safety of the footpath. I heard somewhere that it’s now been made illegal to not take ‘flowing water’ photos when the opportunity presents itself. That was tacked onto the ‘HDR Swan photo 2010′ legislation in congress I believe. (Forgive the in-joke).
That was pretty much our trip. An enjoyably sedate couple of hours spent wandering about taking conflicting light meter readings, arranging leaves, pine cones and other detritus while moaning about having to go back to work on Monday. If you haven’t already been to Avondale, I very much recommend it. It’s here, not too far from Rathdrum in Co. Wicklow.
Oh and as it’s my first post of 2012, happy new year.
Grabbed this on my way out the door to work yesterday morning. Had I actually thought about what I was doing, I’d have put the 70-200 on Julie’s 5D2 and not my own 5D. It all went a bit wonky in post processing. It’s a bit of an odd feeling, going from shooting a photo to processing, uploading and posting within a 48 hour period. Worse still, I was almost tempted to post it last night. I don’t know if it’ll catch on.
This will probably be my last post for 2011, due mostly to the laziness that this time of year inevitably brings. That and the preoccupation of eating and drinking as much as possible. I might get a post in between the overlapping screenings of “It’s a wonderful life” and Harry Potter films on the various terrestrial TV channels however.
If I’m not back until 2012, have a very happy Christmas and a similarly merry new year. (Yes, I know). Back in 2012 for some truly epic Cork photowalks, some home brewing and more of the same non-specific whingery.
My first post in December and I’m back with a couple of photos and a large bag of excuses. I became the newest splitter at the end of November when I left my old job and started a new one. I think either I underestimated how busy I’d be or grossly overestimated the ‘settling in time’ I’d end up taking because it’s been crazy pretty much since I started. Sadly, updating the blog has been far from top priority although it’s always stuck in the back of my mind. It doesn’t really help either that I haven’t been taking any new photos of late. Above are two shots from Powerscourt Gardens taken in October. I imagine the place looks a little different now.
Been on a bit of an analog thing of late, thanks in no small part to the quantity of velvia scanned some weeks back. No updates in a while because I started a new job a couple of weeks ago and outside all of the settling in, trying to remember as many new names as possible and all that, I haven’t been hugely inclined to udpate the blog. These three were taken with the Diana fisheye lens that Julie got me some time ago for my birthday and/or Christmas. To tell the truth, I’d never successfully used it on the Diana before and it spent much of it’s time on my 5D thanks to the EF adapter that came with the gift.
I completely blew these out too but after some scanning luck and some wild slide bar wanging in lightroom, I got a somewhat acceptable outcome. Not to everyone’s taste I’m sure. Subject wise, they are of course in the botanic gardens in Dublin on one of the last (or possibly the last) photowalk I attended up there while the place was under a blanket of snow about this time last year. The increasingly dark and cold evenings reminded me of these photos and have made me hope that the snow either stays away for as long as possible or doesn’t come at all this year.
Maybe some ‘novelty’ snow on Christmas Eve/Day. After that, I can’t be dealing with it.
Not very wintry but it was the next shot on the same roll so what the hell. The inside of the greenhouse at a much more friendly temperature.
Now that all the France holiday posts are done, I can get back to reviewing some of the more recent additions to my lightroom catalog. This was from a batch of Velvia I developed recently (and had been sitting on the shelf in the spare room for about a year previous to that). How do I know that? Because other shots on the roll were from Christmas/New Year 2010 at the Botanic Gardens. This was shot with the Diana, something I haven’t picked up in quite a while. I initially thought the light leaks this roll picked up from nearly a year sitting on a shelf would ruin the roll but once scanned some of the shots didn’t look too bad. Almost usable, like the above.
One last night in France. No cities, no tours, no nothing. The final night to be spent away from everything in the countryside. At least that’s what we decided when looking around on “Chambre d’Hotes de Charme”. We needed something north of Reims, relatively close to Calais to avoid having to haul ass the next day and above all, something quiet and peaceful. So we found Manoir Francis. If I could choose only one photo that sums up my experience here, it’d be the below.
We received a warm welcome and got a whole host of information about the area and where is best to go for dinner. All the useful stuff. As soon as we got to the room the boots came off, the jeans went on and I sank into the a bed as comfortable as we’d experience all those miles back in Maison Laudiere at the start of our holiday. Course, that didn’t last long when Julie hoofed me off the bed so she could take photos. As usual with this kind of scene, she’s done it justice and then some.
The property is just beautiful. It sits behind a high wall in the middle of a very small village, about an hours ride from Calais. The nearest town is Montreuil, where we ended up going for dinner in a smallish yet impeccably presented restaurant. The food was bloody good too, including a very, VERY boozy creme brulee that Julie had to finish because I’d have been four times over the drink driving limit if I attempted to eat any more of it than I already did. You could tell we were nearing our holidays end given the number of British tourists that sat around us as we ate.
After one hell of a feed I slept the sleep of the almost dead and awoke to a brilliantly sunny yet pleasantly cool Tuesday morning.
After a traditional French breakfast (and some of the nicest coffee I’d had in a week or more) I set about loading up the bike while Julie chased peacocks, ducks and various other wildlife around the gardens with her camera. I later became convinced that one of the rather scraggly looking peacocks was bent on causing harm, cornering me as I tried to go back into the house to collect some bags. No, I didn’t kick it in case that’s what anyone was wondering.
The speed at which I loaded up the bike directly reflected how much I was looking forward to leaving France. It took at least twice as long as it had been taking on other mornings. I was also considering the journey that lay ahead on the other side of the channel tunnel.
We were waved off by our hostess and got on a mix of D roads, motorways and motorways under construction. In a little over an hour we were checking in at the eurotunnel and leaving behind nine and a bit days of what had been one of the most memorable holidays I’ve ever taken. My goal for this second bike trip to France had been to do it properly this time. To keep off the motorways as much as possible, see the country, eat nice food, relax and enjoy the company. It’s now been about six weeks since we returned and I have only one question; When can we go back?
As you may well imagine, one of the main reasons for stopping off in the Champagne region was to drink some of the locally produced booze. Imagine!?! Not just drink it though, see all the in’s and out’s of it, to do the tour so to speak. Having done some research online before setting off, it seemed Ruinart was one of the best if not the best tour to do in Reims. So I emailed them and enquired about booking a tour. At the time I didn’t see any mention of tour opening hours or days off or anything useful like that on their website. So I let the email do it’s work and waited for a reply. And I waited. And I waited some more. Then we arrived in Reims. No email back from Ruinart. On the morning of day 8, our second and last full day in Reims, I began to fret about the fate of the Ruinart tour. I rang them. I think I got the gift shop. It surprised me (perhaps only in the way an English speaking tourist can be surprised while in mainland Europe) that the guy in the gift shop didn’t have a word of English. So in my best leaving cert French (and I waited until Julie was in the shower so as not to embarrass myself further), I mumbled through a short conversation with the man. It was Sunday morning, perhaps not the best day to be enquiring about tours. As I said though, I didn’t see any opening hours on the website. No tours today was what I was able to translate. Shit. I’m not leaving Reims without doing this.
I trawled some websites detailing the other champagne houses that existed in Reims and it appeared the closest and most accommodating was the house of G.H. Mumm on the other side of the city to us. I say other side, I actually mean 20 mins walk. I got the tour start times, read various reports that pre-booking was not necessary and we were away. Well, we were away after a coffee and croissant breakfast. Priorities people.
After finding the location of the tour (and making several very poor ‘Mumm’s the word’ jokes), we walked into reception and enquired about two of the top tier tour tickets. I wasn’t coming all this way to do the bargain basement, poor mans tour. Having said that, it was only something like twenty euro each and the tour was exactly the same. The champagne you got at the end was different though. The four women behind the reception desk were seemingly bemused at our arrival. There was some shuffling of papers, some inter-receptionist hushed conversation and finally ‘you want to go on tour now?’ question. Eh, yes. It turned out that although listed for a 2pm start, the tour had started at something like 1:57pm and we arrived at 1:57pm and 30 seconds. Panic! When we finally got our tickets printed and were shown to our seats amongst the tourists that managed to be on time for the tour, it appeared the only thing we’d missed was a minute or two of the bloody introduction video. Having said that, beyond the initial confusion, the staff were very friendly and very knowledgeable.
After the video came the part we were here to see, the long stone staircase down into the caves several storeys underground. We began our underground adventures with an introduction into the three different types of grapes used to make the final product, where the grapes came from, some detail on the vineyards exclusively growing grapes for Mumm and all that kind of thing. Some terms I’ve seen on bottles were thrown around the crowd of about 25 people and along with the backlit posters on the walls, things started to fall into place. Grand Cru, demi sec, brut, bits and pieces to make up a better understanding of where this complex process is rooted. We were brought through rooms like the one on the right that had vast fermentation vessels, storage vats and lots of other stuff that was quickly forgotten about as soon as we moved to what I saw as being the more interesting part of the tour.
We saw the various sizes of bottles and learned that champagne is only produced in bottles up to magnum size (if I remember correctly). Anything larger is filled from separate magnum bottles. Makes sense I suppose.
At the end of the corridor, we paused for another short video and some more of the process was explained. I tried to take as much in as possible, as if there was going to be an exam at the end of the tour to determine if I got to taste the final product or not. The video ended, the tour guide opened another door and we were going down another stone staircase into a distinctly colder level, several stories below where we already were.
I can’t remember how deep underground she said we were, but it was getting quite chilly. Evidence of the change in temperature was on the faces of those that had not thought to bring jumpers or jackets to cover themselves with. Star jumps, you’ll be fine. The end of the stairs opened out into an arched room, racks of bottles in various states of maturity lined the walls. We learned how before computerisation, one man would make minute turns to each bottle in the racks to manage the sediment. Not so amazing until you consider that the man would handle up to 40,000 bottles a day. Suddenly, sitting at a computer for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week didn’t seem like such an RSI inducing chore. The poor bugger.
So the bottles would get gradually turned and in doing so, would start to stand more and more upright in the racks. The sediment was forced to sit in the neck of the bottle with this turning and lifting action, making it easier to remove when the bottles were properly matured and ready for sales.
Photography was quite challenging in the dimly lit cave. In fact the cave was only lit with warm orange coloured bulbs so it also turned colour control into a nightmare. This didn’t seem to bother the other tourists who gleefully lit everything up with a burst of flash, blinding us all in the process. For those who wanted something other than the ‘champagne like a rabbit caught in the headlights’ look, the process was a bit slower and required more thought. That and very high ISO. There were seemingly miles of caves, the racks upon racks of bottles in various states went on forever. Quite an eerie place to be on your own I imagine.
While hanging back to take photos of pretty much what you see above, I missed some vital piece of information. The loss of this information will surely haunt me to the end of my days on earth. It was something like ‘the longest tunnel in any champagne cave’. Sure enough, a fairly long tunnel.
I suppose the plight of any photographer on an organised tour is that we always seem to find ourselves at the back of the group, always playing catch up and being hurried along by sometimes impatient tour guides. Thankfully this tour guide wasn’t impatient, about as far from impatient as is possible in fact. That helped to create a thoroughly enjoyable tour and while I may have missed some information, I made up for it in the photos I got.
So where were we? The bottle is sitting on it’s head in the rack, waiting to be released to the general public. In the old days it took an awe inspiring sleight of hand to quickly remove the temporary cork and the sediment before re-sealing the bottle so that none of the contents or indeed the fizz can escape. These days, they just freeze the neck of the bottle before removing the cork. The sediment, frozen in a small amount of champagne, slips out of the bottle before it’s re-corked and has a neat little wire basket fitted. Like getting the figs into fig rolls, I never fully understood how champagne became carbonated. The tour and the attitude of the tour guide served to dispel any illusions that some people have built up about champagne being a drink only for special occasions. It’s wine. We drink wine with dinner, with sweet food or just because we want to drink wine. I suppose I never really thought about champagne like that until I did the tour. Tell that to the bottle that’s been sitting in the fridge for two years.
All that was left to sink in as we took a lift back to ground level and made our way across the the courtyard to ‘the best part of the tour’. Yes, the tasting. Our super elite mega pricey ‘considerably richer than you’ tickets granted us the opportunity to taste two different champagnes; A rosé and the grand cru. Better still, I got the flute of grand cru that Julie wasn’t too keen on. It was Glenmorangie distillery all over again.
Having been allowed some time to taste and gather our thoughts, admittedly most about what we were going to have for dinner, we were ushered out of the tasting room to make space for the next group. The route brought us through the gift shop and I had to do an on-the-fly bit of calculation to work out if a bottle of grand cru or demi sec would fit in the luggage on the bike. Alas no, it wasn’t to be this time. I started to feel like I could easily enjoy a flute or three of champagne when I wasn’t being a coffee or whisky snob. I still wondered about the likes of Dom Perignon though. Was it all that better or is it just ‘badge snobbery’? I knew the answer to the question ‘would I be able to taste the difference?’ though. A certain and resounding ‘no’.
After wandering through the nearby graveyard and before venturing out for dinner we indulged our newly found appreciation and curiosity for champagne by popping into a shop and buying a demi of Laurent Perrier demi sec. We didn’t get to taste demi sec during the tour but loving all things sweet, we were curious enough to buy a bottle. Long story short, it worked out. I want more.
Wait, what? Graveyard? I don’t know if it’s just a photographer thing or what, but I have an almost unnatural appreciation for a photogenic graveyard. There was one such graveyard on the route from G.H. Mumm back to the city center. It began to rain. Enough said.
Strolling around for a few minutes, it seemed a lot of the most recognisable champagne families had plots here. We spotted several famous names among the several acres of stones. Nothing too exciting for the remainder of the day except a real sense that the holiday was coming to an end. All good things and all that.
Leading with a photo this time, this was taken on the way to Reims when I pulled over to get out of the wind for a minute. I will admit to the two nights in Reims being somewhat of a backup plan, the original plan was to stay a night or two in the nearby town of Épernay and spend much of the time rolling between champagne houses. Having looked at the prices of hotels in the area (and picking my jaw up off the floor), Reims became the new plan A. By now the full on ‘not doing anything because I’m on holiday damn it’ mode was in full swing and as such, the photography took a back seat. In fact I should probably just name this post ‘Day 7; Reims Cathedral’ because that’s pretty much all we did on our first day in Reims. We walked around the city, ate, drank and generally didn’t do that would make a very interesting blog post.
The hotel was only a few minutes walk from the cathedral, in an out of the way, middle of a residential area kind of place. It was only a few minutes off the motorway and through a very straightforward series of junctions and sat nav directions. Chosen for it’s safe underground parking, the proximity to the cathedral and the city center was a nice surprise. So as you may have assumed already, we discovered the cathedral. It was nice to get inside the cavernous, cool building on a day that must have been in the low to mid 30′s temperature wise. Definitely one of the hottest and most extreme sun days we’d experienced during the holiday.
So the stitching on the vertical panorama above may not be perfect but it gives some sense of the scale of the building. Just ignore the sheared stone column and the half a tourist propelling himself along without any legs. I had considered asking everyone in front of me to stay perfectly still for 20 seconds but I wasn’t sure how well that would be received. After our first experience of Reims in the Cathedral, we wandered aimlessly into what appeared to be the city center and ate a wonderful al fresco dinner in what appeared to be the busiest bar/restaurant in the city. Some more wandering to work off the full stomachs turned into a general meander in the direction of the hotel as the night drew in rapidly around us.
Something we hadn’t expected, when crossing Rue Libergier, was to see swarms of people heading in the direction of the cathedral. Curiosity drew us in their direction and it was immediately apparent what the attraction was.
If I’d thought about it some more, instead of concentrating on the show in front of me, I’d have actually got the settings on the camera right. Maybe I would have even managed to shoot some vide. Several high powered projectors lit up the front of the cathedral and performed a very impressive light show set to music. I remembered seeing this effect on other buildings around the world but up to now had only ever witnessed it on youtube or elsewhere on the internet. Speaking of which, you can watch the entire nearly half hour light show thanks to some intrepid youtuber here as long as you can handle the hand held shaky camera thing. Best to watch in 1080p in full screen if your broadband and/or computer will allow you. This youtube user has just a snippet of the show but managed to get to the front of the crowd with a tripod. It was amazing.
With the smug sense of feeling like we’d accomplished something of cultural value (or at least I did), we headed back to the hotel to snack on the sweet stuff we’d bought in Riquewihr before departing.
I suppose technically that’s not true, given that we arrived in Riquewihr on the afternoon of day 5. For the sake of continuity, lets imagine all these wonderful events took place on day 6. Riquewihr is a strange place, it didn’t quite match up with the photos and descriptions I’d seen of it before we arrived. It’s as if Disneyland suddenly became a working farm. Or perhaps like a long forgotten set piece from “The Sound of Music” was just suddenly dropped in the middle of rural France. It’s a walled town, or at least the part that’s inside the wall is. It seems to expand far beyond the wall in at least two directions, every other direction is taken up with vast grapevines. Everything has taken a decidedly German feel about it. From the buildings to the food even to the people (no, I’m not counting the masses of German tourists). It seems to be a very hard working town intent on fulfilling the requirements of only one industry; Wine.
The winding D road that brought us up to the town was lined for miles with fields of sun drenched vines, a sight and smell that will linger in my memory. The entire portion of the walled town is cobbled and I admit to being more than a little puzzled on how best to attack it on the bike, given that our hotel was right in the middle of it. The whole thing is very pedestrian focused, I suppose that can’t really be helped with the amount of tourists that are still around at this stage in September.
Of course at this stage I hadn’t seen how the locals do it. Pretty much just take the most direct route to the destination and the tourists will move. So I found a slightly less busy side street and after some twists and turns down cobbled lanes, we were at the hotel unloading the bike. This was another two night stop so pretty much all the luggage was stripped off and brought up the stone spiral staircase to our room in Hotel de la Couronne. As you can well imagine, there was plenty of exploring. Julie donned her best stripey jumper to fit in with the locals and we were off out amongst the madness and grapes.
Yes, I think I’ve already mentioned there were some grapes in the area. This was taken only about a 5 minute walk from the hotel. It wasn’t hard to find photogenic grapevines in the area. Turns out it was a lot harder to find a can of coke in the area but the less said about that the better in case I launch into yet another long-winded rant. On that, I still hadn’t fully gotten the whole ‘small French town’ thing. Despite Riquewihr being a tourist attraction and having numerous hotels, there wasn’t a convenience store to be had after about 6 or 7pm. The odd evening I take a mad notion for a bottle of coke and it’s been known for me to quaff the odd bottled or canned beer after a hard days touristing. No. Not here. Even the only bar in the town closed at an palette-dryingly early hour. I still hadn’t learned to stock up during the day, as if there was some storm or mythical creature roaming the streets at night that delighted on poking fun at those who found themselves thirsty. Ok, I’m done.
Yes, the town is nice, there’s no denying that. It’s even relatively quiet for such a tourist attraction. Having said that, I’m sure a lot of the visitors were on day trips because at night, it cleared out considerably. So we found somewhere to have our dinner and perched ourselves on the plastic patio chairs in the courtyard of one of the numerous restaurants in the town, all of which seemed to be serving the same food anyway. Julie’s fine as long as there’s something with chicken on the menu. My many attempts to have her try something a little more adventurous have failed up to this point. I can’t remember what I ate on the first night but I’m sure it was something fantastic. Not memorable in the slightest but fantastic all the same.
Day 6, the actual day 6 mind you, started with not knowing where the hell we were going to go get breakfast. We settled (Julie went ‘ooh’ and I wasn’t too bothered either way) on a place pretty much right across from the hotel and had the standard French breakfast consisting of bread, preserves, croissant, orange juice and bad coffee. It is worth noting however that the coffee here was better than any of the previous attempts. Satisfied, we set out back on the same grapevine lined road to find something suitably German sounding in the middle of the French countryside. After a fill of extortionately priced fuel from an unmanned station in the next town over, we found Chateau du Haut-Kœningsbourg. No, I still haven’t figured out how to do the thing over the A in Chateau. It wasn’t really hard to spot the site, it’s nestled high in the mountains overlooking the town in which I’d just been swearing at petrol pumps. When we did finally get up there after yet more impressive switchback turns, the view was quite something.
Just before this was taken, there was a mass of white fluffy cloud obscuring the view. As it moved off to the left I tried in vain to get a photo of it. Needless to say, it didn’t come out as expected. It looked nice anyway, take my word for it. I don’t have any way of accurately describing the size of the castle/Chateau/whatever you want to call it. I’ll just have to settle on ‘feckin huge’.
By the time we had finished all the climbing throughout the many staircases and hallways in the Chateau, we found ourselves in one of the turrets, surrounded by cannons, catapults and other bits & pieces that seemed as if their days of intentionally causing harm was over. Just unintentional these days, having witnessed another tourist stub his toe on one of the smaller canons cast iron wheels. The entire turret was a quite impressive wooden construction, very open and airy. Especially when I walked close to the edge and you could see directly down to the ground many, many feet below. The turret windows did offer views as impressive as the one I posted above in pretty much all directions. Sadly, some of the castle was under repair at the time we visited so you’ll just have to imagine the below photo without the scaffolding or the crane peeking out.
It was the perfect day to visit, slightly misty rain when we arrived and fine when we left. After risking a hernia pushing the bike out of the space I’d parked it in (still haven’t entirely learned to always park facing out), we set off back down the mountain towards Riquewhir. So back down the switchbacks, through the forest and past all that wonderful scenery that I seemed to be growing accustomed to at an alarming rate. Would there be withdrawal symptoms when we left? Hmm…
Back on that same old grapevine lined D road and Julie wanted an excuse to practice her French. Well, it was more a means to an end. I’m sure if you’ve already read her blog post you’ll know where I’m going with this. There were dozens of people out harvesting grapes, big yellow buckets, tractors, jumpers on fenceposts. That kind of thing. Meanwhile, I took the more sedate and less challenging route of photographing an object that I didn’t have to ask permission of and that doesn’t usually talk back.
It was warm. If I didn’t know any better I’d have thought there was a huge storm rolling in. After pictures of friendly farmers had been taken, we returned to the hotel for a much needed afternoon break. Well, and to get out of the heat for a bit. Being Irish on the continent is a hard job. We’re just not built for this kind of weather. So back out into the streets of Riquewihr and while mumbling things like “Ohh I’m not sure” and “I don’t know if I can pull it off”, we wandered into the outlet shop for one of the towns wineries. After tasting some of the recommended wines (almost like we knew what we were doing) and being the uncultured swines that we are and not spitting out the mouthful of wine after tasting (woo, free wine!), we settled on three bottles to bring home with us. Three bottles which sit in the cupboard, waiting for a ‘special occasion’. Much like the bottle of Tattinger champagne that’s sat in the fridge for the last 2 years waiting for a similar occasion. We’re going to have to come up with something to celebrate fairly soon.
Some more farting about looking at tourist tat shops and eating ice-cream ensued after the traumatic wine buying session and before long we were settling back to looking for a place for dinner. As the evening drew in and visitor numbers in the town began to drop, we took a seat on the verandah of a restaurant around the corner from the hotel. Hell, pretty much everything was ‘around the corner from’ or ‘across the street from’ the hotel in this place. It’s not like you could get too lost. Being the sometimes adventurous sort that I am, I went for something new; Chocroute. Back to the uncultured swine thing, I’d never before seen or even heard of this seemingly wonderful sounding dish. What appeared some minutes later was a veritable feast of meat, potatoes and more sauerkraut than one man could (or should) possibly eat in a single sitting.
Having had my fill of sausage (careful now), I pushed aside the remaining sauerkraut for fear that the amount of it I’d already eaten would make my innards rise up against me and stage some kind of overnight coup while I was sleeping. It was then and only then that I noticed a strange sight across the road from the restaurant. I’ve already said that Riquewhir is very much a wine town, a farming town. So no surprise that it’d be inhabited by a French version of the farmers we have in Ireland. So imagine if you will, the sight of an Irish farmer in his early 40′s off out for a drink after a hard day in the fields. He’d have a pint of stout of course. Maybe a pint of Smithwicks or something similar. While his French counterpart, looking much the same, is holding a decorative glass full of red wine. Ok so maybe it looked funnier than it’s coming across here. I just tried to imagine ‘the boys’ in any rural Ireland town going for a few drinks after all the daily chores are done and choosing a nice cold glass of pinot noir.
The chilled red wine thing threw both of us. After some investigation it appears to be the norm in Alsace but the first time we thought the staff in the restaurant were having a laugh at the tourists. Again with the uncultured swine thing. That’s coming up all too often I fear.
We packed up to leave the next morning after having breakfast in the same spot and I had to fight off the urges to take the scenic route back through the mountains. This is an area we will almost certainly be back to, although we may pick our hotel a little more carefully next time. The Vosges are amazing (as you’ve seen in the last post) and the many small towns in the foothills are picturesque and thankfully, full of accommodation. It’s to be expected of course, given the alternative route from Thann to Riquewihr and beyond is the famous ‘Route du Vin’. The next stop is Reims, another city I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce properly.
