A birthday celebration in a French farmhouse

Alex and I were so excited to get the invitation to celebrate our friend Martyna's birthday over a weekend in a farmhouse in France.  I know, we are so spoiled.  Here's the birthday girl!

You may remember Martyna and Paulius from my post on our lovely Lithuanian friends some time ago.  Well, Martyna had the wonderful idea to celebrate her birthday on a little trip with 10 friends - all of whom were Lithuanian except for Alex and me. 

We went to a T-I-N-Y village in the Champagne region of France where we stayed in a barn that had been converted to a 4-bedroom retreat.  The property had lakes nearby, large open fields and horses!  Spending the weekend with this group was so much fun! 

We all cooked dinner together...

 

 

Explored Langres, a nearby city...

 

 

 

Rode horses...

 

 

 

And celebrated Miss Martyna around a fire with chocolate cake!

 

 

 

And to top off the weekend, we played in a field on the way home and got some great photos with the haybales.  And you know...I LOVE haybales :)

 

Thanks to Ineta, Ema and Paulius for the great photos and to our sweet Lithuanian friends for speaking English the entire weekend so we could participate in the conversation :)

 

Love from Luxembourg...

Melanie

 



 

 

A second visit from Ms. Connie

Once again, I'm going to attempt to catch up on all of our summer adventures. With the trips and large number of visitors, team Martin made so many memories this year. We had the chance to make a second round of memories with Alex's mom as she returned to visit us in July...

Ms. Connie is quite the expert travel planner. When she arrived, she'd done all of our work for us by routing out travel plans, finding accommodations, etc. for our journeys.  This time, we ventured to the Alsace region of France and explored new German cities in the Black Forest. One in particular, Freiburg, became another favorite city on my list and reminded me, again, that Germany is way underrated!

Here's a map of southwestern Germany where Freiburg sits in the corner near France...

 

 

Freiburg is a university town and that was evident in the amount of young people on the streets, the great shopping, the number of cafes and the energy of the city's center. Here we are (finally, yet briefly wearing summer clothes!!) at the market in Freiburg...

 

Freiburg market

 

Though Freiburg was our home base for the long weekend, we also visited several surrounding little towns including St. Peter, Furtwangen and Triberg. Triberg, below, is known for its huge waterfall...

 

Alex and his mom in Triberg

 

After several days in the Black Forest and a day in Basel, Switzerland, our trio headed back over to France to make a few pitstops in Kayserberg, Ribeauville and Colmar, France before returning to Luxembourg. Kayserberg was a delightful surprise, as neither Alex nor I had been there, or even heard of it before...

 

 

 

I bought an adorable ceramic baking dish in Kayserberg that will always remind me of our time there.  The style of baking dish is one of the things the Alsace region is known for.  Isn't it cute?  It bakes a delicious chicken, too :)

 

 

 

Our last stop, Colmar, is close to and similar to Strasbourg and just about as picturesque as it gets. Little bridges perched over canals, flower boxes on every window and colorful timbered houses describes quaint Colmar...

 



 

 

And thus completes another memorable and special visit!  Up next, a weekend birthday celebration in a French farmhouse :)

 

Love from Luxembourg...

Melanie