Today was a long day as we wanted to go to the Alsace wine region, and in particular to visit two towns that were the inspiration for Belle’s town in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Riquewihr and Ribeauville. We started by catching the 8 am train from Zurich to Basel. We then walked to the second station in Basel to catch the transfer train to St Louis on the French side of the border. We then caught the Alsace Wine train to Colmar. We had seen nice pictures of Colmar, so we wanted to explore.Turns out the station is about a kilometer away from the old town, so we started the day with a long walk. When we finally got there though, it was worth the effort. Colmar is beautiful.
We had worked out that we needed to catch the 106 bus for Riquewihr, so we headed to the Tourist office to get directions. On the way, we found and met one of the day’s minimum requirements – French Nutella Crepes. The girls were in heaven!
We finally found the bus stop and soon after the bus came to take us to Riquewihr. The Alsace countryside is beautiful and green, full of vineyards and country houses. We arrived in Riquewihr after about half an hour and stepped into the 18th centrury!
We enjoyed just walking around the streets and into the win tasting rooms. After about an hour’s exploring, we sat down at D’Brendelstub for a light lunch. After lunch, we assessed our options. The next bus was not until 5pm and we really wanted to see Ribeauville. So we started walking. The road through the vineyards was long, but fairly flat.
We walked through Hunawihr, which was nowhere near as pretty, then continued onto Ribeauville. Ribeauville is also very pretty. It has three old castles overlooking it, and the house of Joan d’Arc.
It was very hot, and we were exhausted from walking. The girls had their obligatory gelato, then we caught a taxi back to Colmar train station. From there we caught the trains back to St. Louis, Basel and then Zurich. We were exhausted, so we had dinner of Burgers in the hotel bar. An exhausting, but wonderful day.