Hello folks!  I have been dying to write blog posts for the past few days, but the places we’ve been to are short on decent Internet access.  Or at least the net access hasn’t been good enough to try to do any writing.  The place where Bill and I are staying right now does not have the best Internet connections, but I am ready to write and won’t be denied.  So here goes.

Some time ago, Bill’s mother, Parker, told us she was going to come visit for a week in February.  She also said she wanted to go on a short trip to France.  Although we went to Ribeauville last month, we ultimately decided to go back there with Bill’s mom because we  knew we’d have to bring the dogs with us and Yannick, the guy who owns the gite we used, is extremely dog friendly.  Yannick runs six rental apartments in Ribeauville.  All of them are named after locally popular wine grapes.  Last month, we stayed in “Pinot Noir”, which is a one bedroom apartment.  This month, because we were planning to bring Bill’s mom, I rented “Riesling”, which sleeps six people and has three bedrooms and two bathrooms.  Surprisingly enough, the three bedroom place was not that much more expensive than “Pinot Noir” was.

Yannick also has four other apartments.  Two are studios in the building where we stayed both times. Two are in a different building very close, but overlooking the main drag through Ribeauville.  We haven’t seen the studio apartments, but we did get to see the two new ones.  They are very cool.  He’s done a great job fixing them up.

So… I rented the apartment and we looked forward to seeing Parker.  But then, she had an accident that caused her to suffer a significant leg injury.  At first, doctors thought she’d had an insufficiency fracture, but the MRI showed that what she really had was a very bad bruise.  It caused her a lot of pain and required her to use crutches, so she cancelled her trip at the last minute.

Originally, we planned to just go to Ribeauville for three nights and then come back to Stuttgart.  But then I decided we should go ahead and add to the trip.  Bill had already arranged for the whole week off so he could entertain his mother.  I remembered a very inviting looking gite I saw advertised last October.

Ultimately, Bill and I visited Semur-en-Auxois, an adorable town in Burgundy.  I remembered the runner up, though, a beautiful place in a tiny town called Saint Marcelin-de-Cray.  It was a bit further south of Dijon and Beaune than Semur-en-Auxois– closer to Macon.  The gite was called Gite de la Maison Bleue and it looked like a really beautiful place.  The price was definitely right, too.  Just 90 euros a night and dogs are accepted with no extra charge.  We booked it for the rest of the week.

So here we are… it’s Thursday and we’ve been having a fabulous time in France all week.  We’ve enjoyed local delicacies, lots of wines, and some interesting cultural exchanges with the locals, both human and animal.  While I’m sorry Parker couldn’t be with us this week, we’ve definitely had some fun and memorable times.  I hope my readers will enjoy taking the trip with us!

A rainbow in Riquewihr…