Culture Shock: La Route du Vin

Yesterday was another adventurous day. We went driving down La Route du Vin (The road of wine). It was very beautiful. As you drive along this road, you have vineyards stretching for miles on both sides of you, spotted with little villages.
Our first stop was Riquewhir. It's an ancient walled village, built in the 13th century! It was really neat. They have a large tower at the entrance to the town, that has the original beams and chains used for the draw bridge. Although there's no longer a moat around the town, instead there's not a road. But it was still cool to see the old planks and chains hanging there. You could almost imagine them in action back in the 12oo's.
In Riquewhir, we wandered through really cute shops, ate amazing macaroons, and my mom and I got a bretzel (pretzel). Hers was just a regular one, and mine was a beignet (it was more like a donut than a pretzel).
Then we road the Petit Train Touristique, which is a small touristy train (oh wheels) that takes you through the village, then up into the vineyards, and stops so that you have an amazing view of the small town, surrounded by vineyards, and all the little towns in the distance. It was quite beautiful.
Next we went back to La Route du Vin and followed it to Haut-Koenigsbourg which is a château (castle) up in the Vosges Montagnes. Here's a little information...

Towering at almost 800 meters, Haut-Koenigsbourg boasts an exceptional panoramic view. From the Grand Bastion, you can see the Alsace plain, the Vosges, the Black Forest, and on a clear day, the Alps.

Built in the 12th century, the castle bore witness to eight centuries of European conflicts and rivalries between feudal lords, kinds and emperors.

There's your history lesson for the day!
We didn't go into the castle and tour it, because we ended up walking half way up the mountain to get to it (this is an exaggeration... but just a small one). So we enjoyed the view for a bit, wandered around the outside, and then headed back to the car.
We went back to La Route du Vin, and started to look for some food. We hadn't had an actual lunch, but it was quite early for dinner time. So we figured that we would just get a late lunch, early dinner. However...I had completely forgotton that it was Sunday. For those of you who don't know... Sunday everything is closed.
So we stopped in a village, but all the restaurants were closed. This was when I told my parents we wouldn't be able to find anything because it was Sunday. But they suggested we go to a bigger town that is more touristy. So we drove there, still nothing was open. By this time, I had walked much too much for the amount of sleep I had gotten and the amount of food I had eaten. All I wanted to do was get in the car, drive home, and sleep the whole way. But my parents, not listening to me saying nothing is going to be open decided to drag me all over these towns, wandering aimlessly looking for an open restaurant.
FINALLY, they saw reason, and decided to head home.
Along the way, we saw a winery called Hubert Blumstein. They had a tasting room, and my mom told my dad to stop. Keep in mind that she has barely any food in her stomach, and she wants to stop to taste wine for the second time that day. But, we all got out and went up to the front door. But it won't open. There's a sign directing us around the side. So we follow it and are suddenly we are looking at a festival.
We still don't really know what was happening, but we got tartes flambees, ice tea for me and wine for my parents, picnic-country style. After we ate my parents tasted some wines from the winery. The guy that was serving them was super cool, and spoke very good english. He walked them through the tasting, making sure they drank the wines in order from dry to sweet, whites first and then reds.
100 km, 20,000 steps, 3 postcards, and 4 bottles of wine later, we arrived home... exhausted.