Where there's a Will(er) there's a way.

Sunday 18th May

Realised last night that we are low on fuel and being Sunday today, manned servos were going to be in short supply. We have avoided the unmanned servos at supermarkets, etc, as they tend not to like my debit cards. We decided to try it at the Super U around the corner, and surprise, surprise,  it worked. That saved us a 30k trip in the opposite direction to find fuel.

We were headed north again today to the Musee Lalique - crystal and glass. This is a brand I had heard of so i was interested to see. There are a number of other crystal manufacturers in the area as this is a good area for the raw materials required, though a lot of the sand now comes from the Netherlands. One of my favourite perfumes (l'air du temps) is actually in a bottle designed by Lalique. 

Just a few of the beautiful pieces on display.

We noticed this as part of the exhibition. It is in an arcade in Paris (see next photo)
so if we get to Paris we might have to go and have a look.

Where to next? We picked up a leaflet about an insect museum in a village nearby. Why not? Well, that was a bit unusual. Lots of pinned insects, and a really strange assortment of paintings and sculptures. Rob described this as someone's folly. A short visit was long enough. 

Odette and Alice out for the day.

These birds were painted on the ceilings between the beams. 

Just watching the tortoises in the pond.

One of the unusual metalwork sculptures.

Time to go home via a chateau nearby - Chateau de Lichtenberg. As per usual - perched on top of the hill. This chateau originated in the 13th century. It was left in ruins in the 1870s after being bombed during the Franco prussian war, then was restored in the 1990s and is open to tourists. 

The Chateau de Lichtenburg.

Your dog of the day - not too many seen on our travels today.

Hard to get good photos of the Chateau
- it is surrounded by forest.

We've been out travelling around in this area for 3 days, not going much further than 30k from base, and we've rarely travelled on the same roads. There are hundreds of bitumen roads, some running parallel only about 1k away. It is staggering though to see just how many small villages in this area (only about 1 inch square on the map), and today we travelled through a number of villages ending ...willer (very german). Offwiller, ingwiller, bauxwiller, reipertswiller, zinswiller, uhrwiller, kindwiller, and on it goes.