April 30th Diary Entry

Creator

Clara Hines

Preview

Creation Date

4-30-1954

Description

Diary entry for April 30th Spillbank

. . . old villages. The streets were so narrow & the houses so close together that we could scarcely get through them. But it was quite an experience seeing them & how people live. Some of the signs on the shops & hotels I know were hundreds of years old for no one now would take the trouble to make such artistic signs. Some of the houses were finished rows & rows of tiny wood shingles V-shaped. Dear only knows how long it took to wall the four sides of the houses but they were most attractive. We had luncheon in a hotel on the side of a mountain where we could look out over the valley and the surrounding mountains. The food was very good but none of us ate very much. Nell had Trout Bleu while Paul, Duncan & I had an omelet with chicken livers & fresh mushrooms. After lunch back to the hotel in a big hurry & Duncan went to bed for a late nap as it was 4 o'clock. I wrote some cards & a long letter to Roy & Dottie. When Duncan woke up, got him dressed for dinner, did a bit of packing & finally got myself dressed. We all dressed up tonight as we were having guests. Capt. & Mrs. Blair Dewey came over from Stuttgart to have dinner with us. He was one of the officers who entertained us at the Presidio in San Francisco a number of years ago. We had quite a nice dinner, and a lot of fun. We ended up at the Spielbank which is the most gorgeous casino I have ever seen. Beautiful

Diary entry for Friday & Saturday April 30th & May 1st - Restaurant "Au Romaine" Strasbourg

furniture done in needlepoint, gorgeous crystal chandeliers, walls beautifully painted. It would have been a shame to have missed seeing it. I had to get into a roulette game of course & came away with about 3 or 4 dollars. We got home and to bed about midnight. Rearranged some of the things in the bags, but went to bed almost at once since we are leaving in the morning early.

May 1st - I got up about 7:30 to have my bath before waking Duncan so that I could do the rest of my packing while he was dressing before breakfast. I did get everything done except finishing the overnight bags. Finally had to take the Scotch down in the paper bag as I just couldn't get it in the bags with everything else. We down to breakfast which we had in short order, took care of the necessary tips and up to get our bags. Paul had asked for them by 10, but we really got them down by a quarter to, which made him happy. Even so it was nearly 10:15 by the time we got away. Paul was anxious to get away early so that we would get to Strasbourg in time to see the clock in the Cathedral which operates at noon. There were a lot of people on the road as it was a holiday being Mayday. We had to go through German customs where we all had to get out of the car. On the French side, Paul was able to get us all through without any difficulty. We were . . .