Yesterday was Frankenmuth Day. elsaf drove judiang and me to Frankenmuth, MI. It was the first time there for all of us. Frankenmuth (the “u” is long in the name) is a town that considers itself Bavaria in Michigan. And it was a cute little town (well, little as in a hell of a lot bigger than my little town, but smaller than Judi & Elsa’s towns).
We started at Bronner’s, the world’s largest Christmas store. Indeed, it was. There were some neat things there – including some cool (expensive) nutcrackers that almost made me go back to my old Collecting Nutcrackers habit. I picked up a few things for my Christmas tree and some incense candles for my smoking men dolls.
After Bronner’s, we drove over to the River Place. This was a series of shops, many of which were cute & somewhat unique. I managed to get through without buying anything – yay! And then we found a parking place in the downtown area, so we could walk to the shops there.
We started at the Cheese Haus. I almost bought mom & dad some Cheap White Wine and Cheap Red Wine. These had generic labeling & were really cute. But they weren’t actually cheap, so I didn’t get any. 🙂 I did finally buy something at a Scottish fudge shop. (Buying fudge in a Scottish shop in a Bavarian town in Michigan – go figure!) I got some peanut butter fudge & some German chocolate fudge. The lady working there let me taste vanilla fudge, but I didn’t care much for it. (Not vanilla-y enough.)
Our final stop in Frankenmuth was the Bavarian Inn. There was a considerable wait for the seats, but the food was worth the wait. We’d ordered appetizers, but it turns out we didn’t actually need to. They had pickled beets, cranberry relish, chicken pasta salad, cole slaw, and noodle soup as starters as part of our meal. Then our ordered appetizers arrived – potato & cheese dumplings and ham & cabbage dumplings. We’d all ordered the Bavarian Combo, which had smoked pork chops, saur bratten, and wiener schnitzel. “Potatoes & kraut” were also provided and we then discovered the potatoes were the same potato dumplings we’d ordered as appetizers. Heh. (They were awfully good, so I didn’t complain.) The meal also came with noodles & corn – but we didn’t know this, so we all ordered spatzel (German pasta). So we had a LOT of food on our table. And we ate quite a bit.
Before supper, however, we made a pact to save room for dessert. So for the second night in a row, we had leftovers. And then we ordered dessert. I wanted to have the Holiday Peppermint Roll. Chocolate peppermint cake wrapped around peppermint ice cream and topped with handwhipped cream and crushed peppermint. Yummy! And all that peppermint probably helped with my digestion. Heh.
Today is Shopping Day (somebody forgot to get me a birthday present… I won’t name any names, but I’ll point at Judi) followed by an evening of fun at Elsa’s folks’ place. I hope that you all have a Happy New Year! (Some of you are already into 2006 – hope it’s going well for you!)