This past weekend it was FINALLY time for the International Beer Expo in Strasbourg, France. Shanna had found out about it before my birthday back in June, and gave me a birthday card with a print out of the details so we could go. I've been looking forward to it ever since. Strasbourg is only an hour & a half away, so Shanna worked a normal work day, then I picked her up Friday afternoon and we hit the road. That was definitely the biggest mistake of the weekend. We've always traveled in the middle of the day, or on a weekend...this was the first time we'd tried to hit the road on a Friday and the roads were packed. Instead of an hour & a half, it took us two and a half hours. While most of the drive was on the Autobahn, the last half hour was through some really pretty French countryside. The sun was almost set, there was a light mist over the ground about six feet high, and it was pretty to look at as we drove through some small French towns.
Finally we get to our hotel, get checked in, and head to the beer expo. It looked a lot closer to our hotel on the map then it actually was, and I didn't realize the metro stop outside our hotel went right to it, so we walked that first night. 30 minutes later we were there, and ready to sample. A friend of ours met us there, and we got to try some of our favorites, Dogfish Head, Stone, Weyerbacher, Lagunitas, and Ommegang to name a few. A few years ago I went to Montreal for a friends Bachelor party, and fell in love with Quebec breweries. They had some outstanding ones in attendance this year at the expo. One of the neat areas they had set up was showing you how to pair French beer with French cooking...as expected, the food samples they had out were delicious.
When we were done for the night, we headed back to the hotel & went to bed. The next morning we got up and took the metro into the city. I'd been to Strasbourg last year with a USO tour and really enjoyed it. This was Shanna's first time, so I was able to show her around the Old Town area. We headed into the cathedral, which is the tallest one in France, and walked around all the shops. The weather was cold & dreary, but at least it wasn't raining. After we'd walked around for a few hours, we got a text from some other friends of ours who live in Wiesbaden that they were just about there.
We met up with them at the expo about an hour later. Regine is a friend that Shanna has known since her early days with the Army in Texarkana, and her boyfriend Marcelo works with her at the Corp of Engineers. It'd been a long time since we'd seen them, so it was great to meet up with them again. Marcelo, like Shanna & I, is a big fan of Microbrew beers, so he was just as excited as we were to be there. It was neat to see some of the things they had set up there, including a motorcycle with hops & barley all over it.
The previous night we'd wandered from booth to booth, but this time we did it right. We bought fresh cheeses & sausages from some of the vendors there, as well as some bread. We laid it all out at a table in the expo center, got our beers, and caught up. That was pretty much how the rest of the evening went. We'd wander from booth to booth, trying what they had to offer. One of the stand out breweries we discovered there was À l’Abri de la Tempête, from Quebec. They had two beers in particular (Corne de Brume and Corps Mort) that were outstanding. No luck finding them here, of course, but they are definitely a brewery I'm going to keep an eye out for when we go home next.
The night ended with us heading to the shopping area, and buying beer for us and for friends back in Stuttgart who had requested a few bottles. It was heavy carrying that back to the hotel, but definitely worth it. One beer I got not because I had tried & liked it, but because it was in a big growler and we both really liked the artwork on it. It was brewery that's near Neuschwanstein, and the artwork was all centered around King Ludwig. The main image on the front is of Neuschwanstein, and along the bottom they had pictures of all his castles, including the one he grew up in that sits almost right next to Neuschwanstein.
The next morning there really wasn't much else left to do. We checked out, loaded the car up, and hit the road. The only thing of note was the weird weather. There was some thick fog in Strasbourg, and through out the entire remaining drive in France. Within ten minutes of crossing the border into Germany, the fog cleared, and it was bright & sunny, without a cloud in the sky. Thankfully the drive home only took about an hour & 15 minutes.
That's it for traveling for a few weeks now. My next post most likely won't be until December. For Thanksgiving, Shanna & I are flying down with our friend Penny to Sicily, and meeting my parents & brother there. We are both really looking forward to it!
There weren't enough pics to upload a new album, so the pictures above will just take you to a hi-res version of which ever pic you click on.
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