Rainy Friday

Yet another rainy damn Friday in Alsace.  I had planned to get up early and go for a run, but rain set in quite quickly and pretty much ruined that plan.  Could not even get around to doing laundry as our drying capacity is pretty much just outdoor laundry lines.

Nita, Cris and Tess headed off in the rain to explore a few castles and perhaps a winery or two.  Matt, Laura and I opted for a quiet day of reading and napping, which we succeeded at admirably.

Mid-afternoon, we were sitting about waiting for the girls to return from whatever international crimes against history they were out committing, talking about this and that.  The topic of food, as always came up and we started tossing around ideas for dinner.  Kinda sick of German and French, we though perhaps tapas might be a nice change.

When the stalwart adventurers got back, we took some time to run to the grocery for a few necessities and then back to the house to freshen up. Apparently pastries made it onto the "necessities" list.

We all trooped down to a little Spanish place in Old Town.  Unfortunately the outside tables were full, but we found a nice spot inside for the 6 of us.  Ordering was easy.  We got a 3.5 litre "girafe" of sangria and asked the waitress to bring us one of all 14 of the tapas on the menu.  Not surprisingly, the sangria made it to the table well ahead of the food.  Nice to have some time to make it through our industrial vat o' wine!

The food was quite good.  I'm embarrassed to say we got so into picking through the many small plates of sausage, roast pork in spicy sauce, marinated herring, roast peppers, air dried ham, etc we got no pics of the meal itself.  After 3 weeks of fairly bland food, the spicy and lively Spanish food was exactly what we needed.  A few things were ordered again, and again, particularly the meatballs in a spicy red sauce that were as soft as clouds!

The meal was quite nice.  Not amazing, but very satisfying and I'm glad we took the time to try it out.  Badly craving gelato or a "road pastry" to help us get home, we mooched through the darkening streets of Colmar.  Unfortunately, it was so late everything was closing up so there was nothing to be had.  We just had to wait till we got back to the house to attack our grocery store pastry purchase.

Not a bad decision!  We had 4 different mini fruit tarts(blueberry, raspberry, citrus, strawberry), a ruhbarb tart and a little white mouse of unidentified nature that was too cute to pass up.  Down side for him we were not drunk enough to pass him up in the frenzy.

Cute and tasty!

Matt sliced everything into 6 bits and we ended the evening with coffee and "pastry tapas".  A grand end to a soggy, relaxing day.

Tomorrow is open market at St. Joseph and we are picking up our whole beef tongue to cook for dinner!!