France Day 4: Biking to Eguisheim

AMY: What a crazy night! It’s 11:20pm and we still don’t know where we’re staying for the night. I’m waiting in the car in front of another hotel while Jeff checks to see if they have any vacancies. We left Kaysersburg this afternoon around 4:30pm with an ETA in Versailles of about 9:30pm. But about 30km outside of Versailles, the freeway was closed and the routed ALL traffic onto these tiny one lane backroads through towns with stoplights and round abouts and it took us over an hour to go 3km. We finally got back onto the freeway and arrived in Versailles around 11pm. We checked the first hotel recommended by Rick Steves but it was a total dump, everything locked up with a padlock on the front door. Maybe they’ve closed? Who knows? I thought Versailles would be more of a country desitnation with the palace and maybe some hotels built around it but it is a sprawling city which seems kind of seedy at night.

JEFF: So back to the earlier in the day. We slept last night in Riquewihr, a small little medieval town with beautiful cobblestone roads and quaint old buildings. We had our crepe for breakfast and then went to Kayersberg to rent bikes at the tourism office. I have to say, everybody has been very nice. We try to speak a little French, but my Spanish continually creeps in and I have about a 10 word French vocabulary, so it gets a little frustrating. The people are patient, but there aren’t as many English speakers as I thought there would be. Even the nice young man in the tourism office could barely speak string a few words together.

But after a little sign language and writing notes, we were able to rent the electric bicycles. They had batteries so that you could get a little bit of an assist up the mountains, which was awesome, because we ended up going 25+ miles to a little town call Eguisheim. We biked through orchards to a ruined castle. Amy kept getting off the bike and stealing grapes from the vineyards. The wine grapes are really juicy and not super meaty like the grapes I’m used to eating. They were delicious, so it was the closest we would come tasting wine. It was a beautiful ride through small towns and the little town we ended up in was old with tiny winding cobblestone streets.

AMY: I only stole 2 grapes today. Seriously two individual grapes. I wanted to taste a few varieties! We rode through all kind of fields that were bursting with produce: apple orchards, blueberry fields, rows of raspberries, corn fields, not to mention that miles and miles of vineyards. I was tempted to pluck an apple off of a tree, but I resisted. A grape or two is okay, but an apple? Well, that’s just going too far. My conscience got the better of me on that one.

And the ride was spectacular! We were mostly on bike paths and we were winding through vineyards and fields. The weather was perfect aside from a little windy on the way back. There is something about riding a bike that makes you feel like a little kid. I even rode "no hands" for a minute, all caught up in the moment. It makes you feel so free. And with the electric bikes, you sort of feel like superman (or wonder woman) because on "high," you pedal a little and you just FLY! You go so fast, it's awesome. We had to use our batteries wisely so we saved the "high" assist for the big hills, used "standard" when we needed a little extra "oomph" and the "eco assist" when we just wanted a tiny bit of help. We biked for several miles without any batteries but the assist was nice because the electric bikes are much heavier than a regular bike.

JEFF: We ate our picnic lunch of sandwiches and LU cookies and hung out for a while in town before we headed back to return the bikes. The ride was a little longer than we had planned for, so we didn’t get on the road back to Versailles until after 4pm. Great drive until the end, like Amy described.

It’s now 12:24am and I am ready for bed. Enjoy the pics and we will tell you all about Versailles tomorrow.

AMY: P.S. This hotel is pretty amazing! It's a super fancy hilton right on the palace grounds! Unfortunately this is the last room and they have no availability tomorrow night. We're vagabonds again...

Our picnic spot in Eguisheim. Seriously amazing. It's like a fairytale.