Alsace Lorraine

Thursday 8^th August Stuttgart to Riquewihr

We all had breakfast in the van and got everything ready for Millie’s flight home and then went up for a last coffee with Jurgen. It had been so interesting to meet him. We set off the airport leaving plenty of time to find a good place to park. This turned out to be a stell platz at the messe on the outskirts of the airport. It took a few minutes to book Millie in on her assisted flight (especially as Mike had to run back to the van for our passports). With these we were allowed to go through with Millie until she left the terminal building.  It was very sad to see her leave but we knew we would see her in 4 weeks time in England.

We then set off for France.  We had a good journey and arrived at Riquewihr around 6pm.   It immediately started to rain and so we had supper and read an English newspaper that we had bought earlier at the airport. When the rain had cleared at 8pm we set off to explore the town. We found it to be one of the prettiest medieval towns we have visited on our trip and were surprised that it is not mentioned in either of our guide books. The town was full of flowers and the buildings were highly coloured half timbered affairs. It turned out that most of these were restaurants and bars reflecting the fact that this town
is in the middle of an important wine growing region (Alsace Lorraine).  The town was a real find and has to go in our favourite list.

Friday 9^th August Alsace Lorraine region

Jacqui got up early to return to the town centre to take some photos. We then set off on the ‘Route de Vin’ to Turckheim. This was similar in appearance to Riquewihr but not as pretty. Mike and I walked the historic tour in about 30 minutes and visited the market which was mainly fresh fruit and veg, salami sausages and cheese stalls including the famous Munster cheese.

From there we travelled to Gerardmer via Munster and the Col de la Schlucht.  It was a very pretty journey rising to 1135M. At Gerardmer we took our lunch down to the lake and relaxed in the sunshine for a short while.  We then continued to our overnight stop at Luxeuil les bains where we stopped on a free aire next to a duck pond. We had arrived early but this gave us time to have a short nap and to catch up with the blog.