Living in the past and another school snafu

Up early as Ottawacker Jr. had a school trip to Montreal. It was his first one with the school to a different city, so I was interested to see how he felt it went.
 
Spent much of the morning doing some more photos – and a pleasant side benefit of going through a 2015 trip to Saarbrücken was recalling a day trip we did to the Château de Malbrouck, in Moselle. The castle was pleasant enough, but we then went for a superb late lunch at the Auberge Saint-Vincent in Sierck-les-Bains (this blip). I remember walking in and the woman telling us they had nothing left for lunches, but is we wanted, she could do us an assiette de charcuterie. When it came out, it was a wooden board piled high with thick-sliced ham, sausages, pickles, terrines, etc. And a big bowl of potatoes, with butter and salt and fresh parsley. As a further apology, we had a carafe of pinot gris given to us. We had intentions of going to have a quick shufti at the Château de Sierck, as we were there, but in the end, we sat in the restaurant until it was almost dark drinking additional (and paid for) carafes of wine. Ah, the joys of travel. He won’t get that in Montreal.
 
The morning then turned into the afternoon, as is its wont, and I continued down the various rabbit holes of my recent history. Before I knew it, it was 5pm and Mrs. Ottawacker and I were in the garden having a pre-prandial drink. The things you can do when you have a moment to yourselves. On a side note, Mrs. Ottawacker seems very nice, I really should introduce myself to her at some stage.
 
Slight snafu with the pick-up of Ottawacker Jr. was easily sorted: Mrs. Ottawacker is perhaps the most literal person in the world, so when she was told that the school would call if there was any change to the pick-up time – she took them at their word. As we were leaving, I picked up my phone and noticed some 20 messages. Chief among these was one from his teacher saying pick-up would be at 8.30pm now. As it was 8.50, there was a good chance we would be late. But we zoomed around to the school and were there before 9. Unfortunately, nobody else was. We wondered what to do – and then Ottawacker Jr. called the cell from our landline. He’d just walked home, found the spare key in its place, let himself in, etc. etc. Like an adult. Quite impressed he made the right choice, especially after yesterday’s incident.
 
Now, I’m not sure why the school is letting 12-year-old-children walk home from school in the gloaming – or why they cannot tell the difference between a  phone call and a message, but we figure that will all come out in the wash. He had a fantastic time in Montreal and was all up for going back again this weekend. He loved, apparently, the architecture of Old Montreal.