Monday, April 27, 2015

Nate Turns 30-something

Nate’s birthday happened to fall on Easter and General Conference weekend (as it often does), but we still managed to fit in a few celebrations. His ‘special birthday dinner’ request was hard-shell tacos. Easy enough. Dessert was a strawberry tart. I could have gone all out and made one, but when you live in a country with French bakeries, why would you make a strawberry tart?

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On Saturday, we had a daytime-date to celebrate. Nate and I headed out to the “Vallée des sept chateaux” – Valley of the Seven Castles. Either end of the valley is about 25 minutes from our house. We made it to 4 of the 7 and saw a fifth from a distance. None of the ones we went to were actually open to the public (the first one was maybe a little too open – no roof, and mostly in ruins). But they were each unique and despite the rain, we had a great morning. We stopped for lunch at a little Italian place right by one of the castles before heading home.

Castle 1: Koerich

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Castle 2: Septfontaines

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Castle 3 & 4: Chateau d’Ansembourg – This was our favorite. Ansembourg has an old chateau and a “new” one – this is the new one. Once again, we couldn’t go inside the castle, but the grounds were very pretty – we decided we’ll have to go back once spring comes because they weren’t quite in bloom yet. The old castle was up on the hill and we saw it from a distance, but couldn’t figure out how to drive up there (and needed to get home to relieve our babysitter) – we’ll have to try again.

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Castle 4: Hollenfels

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We had fun celebrating, even though it was cold and rainy!

4 comments:

Dave and Liz Morris said...

Your selfie game is on point. I might need to get you guys a selfie stick for your next adventure. Does amazon.eu have that?

Camille said...

Love the "open" castle.

Cindy said...

Memorable way to spend your birthday. Can't believe how many castles are close by.

Jacob said...

Cool castles and can't believe you could go see all of that on a "day date"