France Days 28 - 33: Our Final France Days

We knew that we wanted our final days in France to be as relaxed as possible to both recover from the stress of visiting Paris and also so that we wouldn't get home from vacation super exhausted. But being more relaxed doesn't mean that we stopped having fun adventures. Here's what we did.

Day 28: Eguisheim and Spa day

We started our day by sleeping in after the exhaustion from Paris and then went to visit Eguisheim for wine tasting and lunch. I know that we've visited a TON of cute medieval towns in France now, but I think this was the CUTEST medieval town that we visited on our whole trip. 

We ambled down street after street of super cute old buildings and it was incredible. This used to be a walled-in medieval city, so it's compact and there's curved cobblestone streets and it was awesome. I already told Paul that I want to visit here again someday. I LOVED it here!

We drank our wine tastings while staring at adorable buildings, and I got to try many types of Gewürztraminer wine, which is my favorite wine. In America, I'm lucky if I can find ONE Gewürztraminer wine at any given store. But the Alsace region of France is where these grapes are grown. I tried many different types and it was all amazing and delicious. I hope we can come back for more days in the future, so I can try MORE Gewürztraminer varieties someday. Mmmm.

After that, we spent the rest of our day in a Therme Spa, which is one of our favorite things to do in Europe. We love how they each contain multiple pools - each a different temperature, with different types of jets and bubbles, and you can try them all and figure out which ones you like the best. Plus, they usually have a section with a super hot pool and a super cold pool, so you can do the hot/cold treatment to your body by going from one to the other over and over. It always feels SOOOO good. Paul also does the saunas (I'm not a huge fan) and there's usually many different temperature saunas to try as well. 

It was a very relaxing day and a great way to recover from our Paris days.

Day 29: Chillin' and Hikin'

We slept in once again and had a delightful lazy morning, and then went off to hike the Grand Ballon hike. Spending time at the spa the day before helped my ankle feel WAY better, so we did a nice hike that we were certain my ankle could handle.

The hike was along the tops of some of the mountains in the area. It started out super cloudy, so we weren't sure if it was going to even be worthwhile. 

Showing off our baguette sandwich that we ate for lunch. We feel so French now.

We kept meandering along the edges of the mountains and eventually the clouds cleared up and we could see for miles and miles. It was very beautiful and we had a lovely time.

On the drive back, we decided, of course, to stop and check out some castle ruins. We simply haven't seen enough castles on this trip and this must be remedied. 

Castle Hugstein was a fun set of ruins to stroll through. It's always nice to just kinda explore things and imagine what they used to look like.

We don't often see triangle shapes with the castle architecture, so this was intriguing to me. 

Day 30: Colmar

We decided to visit Colmar because the description of it was: "Colmar is a fairytale town in the Alsace region renowned for its wonderfully preserved medieval Old Town". Honestly, though, I personally preferred Eguisheim over Colmar. Colmar was a larger city - part modern and part medieval - and LOADED with crowds of tourists. Eguisheim is a small village, with way less people and a less touristy vibe. 

But first, on the drive over to Colmar, we did a short hike to see The Three Castles of Eguisheim, which was a set of three different castle ruins along a ridge of a mountain.

Each ruin showed a slightly different castle floor plan, and it was fun to compare/contrast all the ruins.

The castle ruins all had spectacular views of the valley.

Then we got to Colmar and walked around so that Paul could be amused by all the 'oohs and ahhs' that I do as I stare at medieval architecture. Even though I preferred Eguisheim, it was still a lot of fun to check out Colmar.

When we got hungry, we found a restaurant that had Escargot. Finally! We got to check that one off our list. They kinda have the taste and texture of scallops. Oh, and I drank Gewürztraminer wine with it, of course. I also ate my final Beef Tartare of the trip. This was my seventh time eating Beef Tartare on the trip, but sadly, it was the worst one. Sigh....I guess we'll have to come back someday so I can eat a better one. I'm addicted.

After lunch, we did a long day of Colmar adventures. First up, we checked out the building that inspired the artist who drew up the designs for Howl's Moving Castle....

I loved all the intricate paintings on the exterior of the building.

Then we checked out the Colmar Cathedral, which was beautiful, and different than others due to the green tiled patterned roof.

And then we ended our Colmar adventures by doing a combo Wine and Chocolate museum/tour. Each section (first Chocolate, then we did Wine) was HUGE and took a really long time to get through. You end up learning everything about the history and processes of making both chocolate and wine. Plus, you get samples of them during the tours AND you get to play silly games (those were probably meant for the kids, but Paul and I are kids at heart).

My handsome Paul posing with a Chocolate version of the Library lady

Day 31: More Pretty Stuff

We sadly left behind our beloved Alsace region of France and started the trek towards Zurich since that's the airport we're using. So we travelled for a few hours into Switzerland to find our final airbnb.

Switzerland is an interesting place - the towns are sadly quite ugly but folks here speak both German and French and since I know German MUCH better than French, it was refreshing to understand things a bit better. And the mountains....wow, the mountains in Switzerland are just incredible and dramatic.

We did a hike at one point in the day to enjoy the mountain views. I did part of it and then rested and Paul did the more scary ridge/rock-climbing bit without me. He took some amazing and stunning pictures of the Swiss Alps.

We finished up the day by doing a short walk around Schloss Meggenhorn, a random fancy house built along the lake with amazing mountain views.

Day 32: Final Fun Day

Today was our final fun day in our France (and Switzerland) adventures. We've had so much fun and yet we also miss our home and routines. To finish things off, we did a lovely mountain hike and ended with time in another Therme/Spa. We know how achy we get on long airplane trips, so we wanted to make sure our bodies were as prepared as possible by getting super relaxed.

Both of these things were on the top of the same mountain. In order to get there, you leave your car behind and take a cable car up to the top. If you haven't learned it by now, I'm absolutely TERRIFIED of heights. I felt very brave for getting on that cable car. I simply kept my eyes shut the entire time, clenched the handrails with all my strength, and moaned in terror whenever the cable car rocked. 

Paul took this charming picture of me as I was zoned out in terror.

He also took this picture from way up high in the cable car....I am so glad my eyes were shut or I would have been screaming at how high we were. 

After we got off the terrifying cable car, we did one of the short hikes that were an option up there. If we ever go back, I'd love to do some of the longer hikes. The paths were all very wide and safe and the views were spectacular. 

We strolled past plenty of cows and beautiful mountain views.

Even though this part of the hike was scary, the path was wide enough that I was comfortable enough to smile for this picture. I am, however, as close to the rock wall as I can possibly get.

The mountain air was nice and cool, and we could have walked forever, if my ankle was completely healed and also if we weren't super excited to relax in another therme/spa. So after a few miles, we turned back and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the Therme. It was not our favorite Therme - it was super small and only had two pools - but it was still what our bodies needed before our flight.

Day 33: Travel

Fortunately, we had zero hiccups in our travel back home (unlike the way here). We got home safe and sound and crashed hard due to the time difference. Overall, we had so much fun in France. We'll post one more post soon with our final thoughts, but it's safe to say that this is not the last time we will be visiting France. There were many parts of the country that we gladly will visit again.

France Days 26-27: Paris - Le Big Pomme

We knew the next two days wouldn't be our favorite: we usually avoid big cities and huge groups of people but figured Paris is one city for which we should make an exception. We had a couple hour drive to get to Paris so we stopped halfway at Gaillard Castle.

Richard the Lionheart wanted a view of the Seine

As always, it's neat being able to walk around an 800 year-old castle all alone with magnificent views. We didn't stay long because there's a lot of steps to getting to Paris.

We had a place to stay in Versailles so we parked in a carpark there and took the underground to Paris. We haven't done much with subways or tubes or untergrundbahn so we were a bit nervous about using public transpo in such a big city. Turns out it's really easy, it just requires a lot of walking between stops.

I had been battling a cold and Cris' ankle wasn't at its best so this day wasn't destined to be great. Also, it was hot so a lot of stuff was closed, and the main train that goes right to the Eiffel Tower was closed for construction too. It was a whirlwind of bad news but we tried to stay positive. We did eventually make it to the sweaty tower. 

This was the main reason I wanted to go to Paris but I left underwhelmed. The tower is cool, that Eiffel guy knows what he's doing with metal, but the area around it just doesn't feel French. One side is a busy road, two sides are people selling Chinese trash souvenirs, and the last side is a nice enough park but it isn't decorated at all. So, it's basically an awesome tower sticking up out of a boring, trashy area. 

Our plan was to not walk very much so we got on a boat tour where you could get off whenever you wanted (well, only at the bridges unless you like polluted water in your nose). You could kinda see some neat things from the boat but mostly it's a taxi. 

We got off the boat by the Notre Dame and walked around what I think is the Latin Quarter. It was a city, that's for sure. Lot's of people running everywhere, a few cool buildings, and lots of food. We stopped for some sweets at a patisserie, they were terrible. The Notre Dame is cool though. 

We had a pass that let us get to the top of the towers but the line was over an hour long, and the same pass would get us in to Saint Chapelle but that was closed due to the heat. So, we got back on the boat and took the Louvre stop and then walked a really long way to Hotel de la Marine.

Weird triangle thing at the Louvre. It's crazy how big that building is.

Front porch of Hotel de la Marine

By the time we got back on the metro and back to our car it was pretty late, we were exhausted, and kinda felt like we wasted a whole day. I'm sure some of you are thinking "Paul and Cris didn't see the real Paris" which we do understand. I'm sure there are some cute out-of-the-touristy-area places that show the charm of the city. We were sick/sore, it was hot, things were closed, so we didn't enjoy it. But also, we aren't city folk. There is so much good food, amazing architecture, fascinating history, and fewer people outside of the city that I don't see a reason to go to Paris. 

Sorry for the downer blog post. We are still enjoying ourselves, I promise. 

Here's a bunch of blue lines in an old basement

The next day we woke up pretty early to be the first ones at the Palace of Versailles. A lot of people recommended we skip Versailles but we were pleasantly surprised. We got there before the big crowds and were able to take our time in mostly uncrowded rooms. 

The place is ridiculously huge and opulent.

We thought this was going to be way too rushed and full of tourists but we had a great time. Then I decided to walk to the Trianon which is just a short jaunt through the gardens away. 

What I didn't realize is the gardens are almost as big as France somehow. I walked forever, got lost once, and finally found the Trianon.... which was closed. It opened at noon so I texted Cris and told her to hop on the first train so after like 2 hours of me walking she got there 20 minutes after me. The petit Trianon is just a little cottage for Marie Antoinette with nice gardens. 

Yep, tiny little cottage

After those two crazy days we got out of Paris as quickly as possible and back to the countryside where we can relax. 

View of the vineyard from our airbnb

We're getting close to the end of our adventure, but now we're in Alsace which is the land of Gewurztraminer (Cris' fav wine) and delicious German food. 

If you're lucky you get a pretzel, but usually it's wet white sausage and a piece of white bread. Yum.

France Days 21-25 : Medieval Buildings Galore

One of my (many) passions in life is ancient and medieval architecture. Basically, any building built before industrialization/modernization is fascinating to me. I love the craftsmanship and skill that go into each individual building. I love the textures, the imperfections, the beauty, etc. etc. etc. 

And right now, my brain is currently overwhelmed from all the incredible medieval buildings we've been seeing lately. I keep asking Paul to take pictures of random medieval buildings so I can look at them later, when my brain and eyeballs have caught up with each other after the overwhelm from it all. It's been a lot of fun to see all of these well-preserved buildings. 

But I know that there's only so many medieval buildings that Paul can patiently listen to me 'ooh' and 'ahh' about before we need to balance that with other cool stuff, so we added some random non-medieval things to our schedule recently as well. Let's take a closer look...

Day 21: Fort la Latte (Château de La Roche Goyon) and Beach day

We started our day by checking out a castle. This one was mainly for defense, as it was strategically placed on the English channel, so it's more of a fort or fortress than a fancy castle. Fort la Latte (aka Château de La Roche Goyon) was a bit of a walk from the parking lot, so Paul took some pretty pictures along the walk. They purposely carved holes in the hedges so you could peek at the castle/fort along the walk.

The castle/fort had soooo many brilliant features to make it impossible/difficult to attack successfully. There were multiple courtyard/barbicans, drawbridges, thick walls, etc. 

It was really well preserved and a lot of fun to explore. Paul went up to the top of the highest tower and took some great pics that show the beautiful water as well as the many layers of the fortress.

And, of course, it's just not a proper castle if there isn't some sort of folklore and weird mystery stones in the area. There's three different folklore stories connected to this mystery stone by the castle. No matter what, it's based on a local folktale about a giant named Gargantua (really clever name there). One story says the giant lost it's tooth (aka the stone). Another story says he lost his finger. And the other story, wellll, I'm sure you can figure it out.

After enjoying a few hours at the fortress, we drove another hour or so towards our next airbnb. We were GOING to stop at St. Malo - a walled old city where pirates lived! It looked sooooo cool as we drove past, but my goodness, the traffic was horrid. We tried to park in about 5 different parking lots, and they were all filled, with lines going into the roads. It was pure chaos, and since Paul and I don't like crowds or touristy things or crowds or cities or trying to find parking or crowds....we just drove away. Maybe someday, in the off-season, we can visit St. Malo....

Since that plan went out the window, we decided to just chill and read at a nearby beach. It was really nice to relax and cool off in the very-brisk ocean and with the cooling wind after so many brutally hot days in a row. 

Day 22: Mont Saint Michel!!!!

This is one of the very few things on our list that we knew was touristy and we still wanted to do it. Mont Saint Michel has been on my bucket list for many years now, and I was super excited to finally visit.

Since this is a very very popular tourist stop, we got up ridiculously early to beat as many people there as possible. Our airbnb came with bikes, so we rode bikes the 2-ish miles down the road to get there. 

The land here is so flat you can see Mont Saint Michel for miles and miles

If we weren't in a hurry to beat the crowds I could have stared at this place for hours.

Some of the cool things about this place - it's a rock in the ocean and they decided to build an abbey here starting in the 8th century. Slowly, over the years, the resulting abbey became as towering and imposing as it is now. You could only get to the abbey/village during low tide, which helped keep it preserved and protected from all enemies. Even at low tide, you had to take the one path to it because all surrounding it is tons of quicksand.

This abbey was a sacred pilgrimage place in medieval times and it was also SUPER important for the preservation of many books/manuscripts. The main purpose of the monks here was to make copies of important books/papers to save them. It's one of the many reasons why I love it so much. That, and, I mean, look how amazing it looks.

To get to the abbey - which is way at the top of the rock - you have to walk up a super narrow street of absolutely adorable medieval shops and buildings. I was in absolute medieval architecture heaven.

The only street to the top, though, is super narrow, and I knew it would soon be jammed full of tourists. So I begrudgingly continued the journey to the abbey (don't worry - we took TONS of building pictures so I can drool over them later).

Getting higher....looking down on the village

Looking at a medieval cart/device for getting supplies into the abbey

This place is ridiculously tall....looking up so much hurt my neck

Apparently, there was a cool virtual reality tour thing to do in the abbey, where you point a tablet at walls and they show you what it looked like in the golden days. But unfortunately, Paul and I could NOT figure out where to get them, so we just walked around in awe of the place without the cool tech. Maybe I'll remember to check the internets to see if someone uploaded things about the abbey there...Anyway, it was a beautiful place and really big, so it took a few hours to get through everything. 

I had originally been pretty worried that Mont Saint Michel would be too touristy and crowded, but since we got up early and beat the crowds we had a great time there. We wisely walked the ramparts to exit the place, since by the time we left the main narrow street was bonkers busy. I highly recommend this place!

Day 23: Bayeux (but no tapestry...)

As Paul mentioned in an earlier post, we (okay, mainly me) were really looking forward to seeing the famous Bayeux tapestry in the city of Bayeux. It's an ancient/medieval tapestry that's super long and tells the story of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, led by William, Duke of Normandy. 

Tragically, the tapestry was shipped to England for the summer, so we didn't get to see it, but we had already made reservations for an airbnb in the town, so we found other things to do instead.

It's a cute medieval town with cobblestones and sooo many buildings that made me 'ooh and ahh'. We rambled around a bit and then went to the Bayeux Notre Dame Cathedral. I'm not usually 'mystical' on this blog, but I will be for the moment. We've gone to many, many cathedrals, abbeys, etc. in our European adventures, and this is the only time (so far) that I absolutely hated the building.

I'll only share a picture of it from the outside. 

Almost immediately when we walked in, the hair on my arms was sticking straight out and I had such awful bad vibes. The statues and decorations didn't help, as they were very graphic and violent. We went down into the crypt and I was so spooked that I told Paul it was time to go. This has never happened before, and I do not know what it means.

Anyway, as I tried to recover from my spook, we walked around the corner and found this ancient and beautiful tree. It was planted in 1797!!!! The vibes completely changed. I was entranced and whispered 'The Divine lives here'. It was such a beautiful tree, and I was really bummed that I couldn't hug it because it's roped off. So I blew it a kiss instead and looked at it for quite a long time.

Spiritual Tree in front of Icky Church

After eating some delicious local mussels for lunch, we strolled the community gardens, which were very nice. And there was another ancient tree from around the same time period in this garden, too. 

As we were strolling the gardens, we heard live music getting started. Paul went to investigate and it looked like the whole town was getting ready to party that night. It turned out that every July 13, all around the country, folks celebrate a Firefighter's Ball. This is a huge town party, hosted by the local firefighters and has ties to traditions from Bastille Day (which is July 14). 

I crashed at our place and Paul went to enjoy the local party, which, naturally, involved crowds, food, and loud music so he didn't stay too long, but he still was happy to check it out. Unfortunately, this is the one night where loud (LOUD, you guys) music happens at the party until about 3am. It was so loud that we could hear it very clearly at our airbnb and it was a rough night of sleep for us both. Even though we were sleep-deprived, it was still interesting to experience something super-local/French!

Day 24: Bastille Day!

We knew it was Bastille Day today, and usually that would mean fireworks, but the country is experiencing drought and excessive heat waves, so all fireworks were cancelled. We didn't know what else to expect for a national holiday, and what we learned is that lots of things are closed and most folks just chill at home with loved ones. This meant it was hard to find things to do, so it was a chill type of day.

We headed to Pont-Audemer, which, GASP, is a cute medieval town, filled with canals and cute medieval buildings. When we arrived, the town square was closed to celebrate the firefighter again. The square was full of firetrucks and people were lined up to greet firefighters. I don't know what the history is here with Bastille Day and an obsession for firefighters, and this is my note to myself to remember to research that at some point. It's kinda weird to just line up to shake the hand of firefighters, but it was intriguing to watch.

We/I admired multiple adorable medieval structures and the cute canals running through the town. We also stopped in the town's cathedral, and I am happy to report there were no bad vibes. It was beautiful!

After that, we headed to Leproserie Chapelle Saint-Thomas, an ancient Leprosy village located in the middle of nowhere. I absolutely LOVE travelling to these hidden gems. It's always fun to go down roads that get smaller and smaller, and wonder if this is accurate or if google is trying to get us murdered by a sheep farmer. The roads eventually reminded us of Ireland, with hedges on both sides and you keep thinking you're actually on a driveway to someone's house.

We found the Leprosy village eventually. It was really nicely explained through signs about the history, which, obviously, was pretty sad. 

Villagers still come here to put things on the altar as respect for the dead.

Once we got our fill of Leprosy history, we decided a good clean was in order. We spent the remainder of the day at the beach/ocean, reading and swimming and relaxing. 

Day 25: Escargot and Etretat

We've been trying really hard to eat as many French foods as possible while we're here. We've gotten most of them checked off our list by now (I have kinda stalled on Beef Tartare and obsessively eat it everywhere I can) but one thing we haven't tried yet is Escargot.

We stopped at an Escargot Farm to learn all about them. The tour was actually fascinating, even though we had to stand in the back and use Google Translate to understand what the guy was saying.

This is when he opened up the boards to show all the snails - so many of them!

At the end, we were HOPING that the guide would give everyone a sample. Or, have cooked ones to purchase. But tragically, while we learned a lot about Escargot, we did not get to eat any. Boo! At least on the positive side, we got to have them hangout on our hands for a little bit. They are cold, wet, and tickle.

After our tour, we decided to break up the day of driving by stopping in Fecamp to check out the Benedictine palace/distillery. If I understand the translation of the French correctly, some con-man in the 1800s (think: Robber Baron Era) decided to claim that he found an ancient Benedictine Grimoire in his attic that had a medicinal and tasty beverage recipe in it. 

He then conned French people into thinking that his beverage tasted good and used all the money from his cons to make the most elaborate and over-the-top gilded monstrosity ever. In a typical ironic twist, he died before it was completed. 

The dude really loved gothic architecture and didn't like bare walls at all.

Am I the only one that thinks the windows are a spooky face?

We did a tour, thinking it would be a typical length tour. But no, it went on forever. There were so many over-done gaudy rooms. At the end, we got to try some samples of the beverage, which is still made today and beloved by some people. Paul and I were not fans. It was like syrupy brandy.

By the time the very-long tour was done, my ankle was not doing great. All the walking (walking on sand is really bad on them) we've been doing lately has officially caught up and I was in rough shape. Since we knew that Paris was coming up next, we decided that I needed to ice/rest while Paul did one final "quick walk" and adventure.

Google lied and said it was a quick walk from the car to see the Etretat Cliffs, but it was longer than expected (thank goodness that I chose to stay in the car and rest my ankle). Paul ended up being gone for a few hours, and I was slightly worried by the time he got back to the car.

He got some great pics of these gorgeous white limestone dramatic cliffs and he had a fun time, so it was worth it. Another awesome day in the books! Next up is Paris...

                                                (This isn't a buttery snail, it's a battering ram)