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.