Alsace

It was a gruelling 36 hours from Canberra to Offendorf but here is Irene surprisingly fresh in the 29 degree warmth of Alsace, where life is just a bowl of cherries...

 Yesterday we went punting at the Ile de Rhinau (near the Rhine)...

With starvation rations ...

...until we made it to the Bords du Rhin in Rhinau for lunch with our hosts François (above) and Gill, Raymonde and Christian (below).  If you ever get the chance to dine at the Bords du Rhin you must order the house speciality, the pike-perch which is cooked using a delicious (but secret) family recipe handed down from generation to generation.

Later we had a short stop in a nature reserve near Herbsheim to walk off the excesses of lunch (unsuccessfully) but you may be interested to see the rare wild Siberian Iris we found (and note the ancient Celtic tumuli in the background) ...

and the even rarer wild Gladiolus...

We have been walking to nearby villages to maintain the memory of fitness but most of the neighbourhood is the flat Rhine floodplain with only the Vosges mountains and the hills of the Black Forest on the horizon to tempt us into some serious exercise. However on Tuesday we are off to the Alps!