Once we arrived at St. Etienne's this morning we immediately hauled tail out to the bus. I think the ride was only an hour and a half, thought I slept through most of it. What I did see when I was awake was breathtaking. It's funny how we can be in such a huge city like Strasbourg one moment and in the next all around us is vacant green country side. There were plots of geometrically arranged trees along the highway, but mostly the view was acres of combed dirt, old villages beyond that and the looming mountains even further.

The bus ascended this road that I'm sure would look like a giant's staircase to the clouds if the trees were cleared away. We reached château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg and trekked up to the entrance, where our wonderful tour guide gave us a brief history of the castle before leading us through. It was difficult to discern which parts of the castle were left from Medieval days and which were restorations made by Emporer Wilhelm II - except, perhaps, for the dining hall, where he'd knocked out the second floor in order to extend the ceiling. The walls in this room were colorful and elaborate and extremely detailed.

After the castle we visited a small village called Kayserberg, evidently one of the finest wine growing areas in Alsace, which was apparent as we traveled to and from it - there were fields as far as the eye could see, and even spare patches of land in between houses, that were covered with grape-vine contraptions. In 1944, Charles P. Murray - the namesake of our middle school - single-handedly fought back a well-armed German force in Kayserberg, and was offered a Medal of Honor for his actions. We spoke with the Mayor of Kayserberg's staff about this and later visited a small gravesite in the heart of the town where some American soldiers had been buried during the war.

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