July 13th-15th - We cross into La France

From our experience along the Rhine out of Basel, we decided we'd prefer to head for the hills and the wine of Alsace than to follow the river north towards Strasbourg. A little variety is good for a cycle route. We decided to take the Alsace Wine Road bike route from Colmar, and then head towards Saverne, where we would cross the Vosges Mountains and head into Lorraine. We crossed into France on July 13th, and immediately everything was different! Well, okay, people greeted us with a 'bonjour' instead of 'guten morgen', which was good for Joshua, whose Francais is much stronger than his Deutch. Oh wait, that goes for both of us.

Crossing the Rhine



At first it was also very hot in France, but we had a few beautiful green, shady routes



I followed this guy into Colmar, where we finally had some french wine and a coffee to revive us and get us to the campsite





And bike ooogling. This is for you, Potter:



Colmar is pretty nice, and they even have their own 'little Venice'. And they decorate with huge kale and chard in their lovely flower arrangements.




The next day we had much to admire, Cashmere Chicken got some air, and we got to taste some fine Alsatian wine made by our new friend, Yves, who saved us from the coming storm. We bought by far the best bottle of 5€ wine ever and found the St. Pierre camp site with his help.