Christmas 2002: December 25

Christmas Day. It didn't totally feel like it, since we weren't with family or anything. But it was relaxing at least. The day was quite foggy, but we decided to go out for a walk. We walked out to two of the towns which were near by -- Aulhausen and Assmannshausen. We caught some singing as we were walking past one of the churches, which was nice.

This area is wine country, so we passed through a lot of grape vines as we were walking. It rained at times, but Sara had her umbrella, so it wasn't too bad. As we were heading back to the hotel we were walking up the hill and through more grape vines. We passed by a couple of old castle ruins. Berg Kaisersteinfels was just below us.

Mäuseturm was on an island in the river. Once we made it back we went swimming at the hotel's pool before getting ready for dinner.

Since it was Christmas and the meal was fancy we decided to dress up formally for the dinner (you can see our waiter in the mirror taking the picture). Tonight's menu included an appetizer, then "pickled coriander salmon on sesame vinaigrette" for the first course. This was followed by "black salsify cream soup with truffled oil". I don't know what "black salsify" means, but the soup was delicious. For the main course we had "crispy roasted goose with red cabbage, glazed chestnuts and dumplings of potatoes" which wasn't bad. Dessert was "crêpes with oranges served with stewed plums and pear helena ice cream". Not quite as good as the baked pear from the night before, but still an excellent desert.

After dinner we went back to our room to read the Christmas story and exchange gifts with each other. It was definitely a different Christmas, but we enjoyed it.

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