Mount Sainte Odile

One of the first trips we took with the students was to a local monastery called Mount Sainte Odile. Sainte Odile was the blind daughter of an Alsatian duke in the 7th and 8th centuries. She did not have such a great relationship with her father, but eventually, after her eyesight was miraculously restored, he founded the convent here in Alsace on the top of a mountain.

The idea that day was for Ian to hike up the mountain with whichever students felt that they wanted to hike, and Sophie and I would ride the bus up to the top with any students who didn't feel like hiking and meet them at the top. The hike started around 9:15am, and what was supposed to take 1.5 hours really lasted almost 4 hours! There were some problems with trails being closed, and the exhausted group of students (all but one decided to hike) finally made it to the top after several cell phone calls to me to try to help them up the mountainside with the use of the map I had bought at the top. Unfortunately, I had the camera at the top of the mountain, so we don't have any pictures of the adventure, but from what I heard, the pictures of Ian frustrated on the side of the mountain wouldn't have been too pretty anyways! ;-)

Here is a picture of the monastery's courtyard:


Sophie at the top:
Sophie, the other student and I all walked to the "source" of Odile's miracle, and Sophie insisted on touching the sacred water:


The gate that guards the place where Ste. Odile prayed near the source:


All over the mountainside you stumble across very old rock and wood carvings.


And since it's a mountain, there is a lot of colorful flora. I thought this mushroom looked like a Smurf house:


I loved this sign pointing the way to Campostela. Santiago de Campostela is a pilgrimage site in the north of Spain, which I visited almost 10 years ago. Someday I'd like to do part of that pilgrimage, but I won't be starting from Mt. Ste. Odile!


Sophie's first real hike:
Some views of the monastery:


The following scenes are mosaics in one of the small chapels on the monastery grounds. They were absolutely amazing...some of the best I've seen.


A family portrait with Alsace behind us:


This was the first multi-time-zone sundial I've ever seen:


A fresco of Christ with Ecclesiastes and Synagoga:


All around the hill that the monastery was on were the stations of the cross built into the rock with tile and ceramic:

And that was just the morning! We ate lunch at the monastery and then headed off to Haut Koenigsburg, a castle on another nearby mountain. I'll try to post more pictures of that part of the trip tomorrow!