Ballard's Tour de France: May 30, 2014: Route du Vin

This morning dawned cloudy and drizzly and it looked like it was going to stay this way all day. Over breakfast, we decided to scrap the biking and instead, drive the Route du Vin and do some hiking in the area. We left Colmar and headed north toward the small town of Ribeauville, hoping to see the Chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg and hike to the ruins of three other castles. Once in town, we followed signs to "Chateaux" thinking it would take us to Haut-Koenigsbourg, but instead it took us to a parking area for the hike to the ruins. It wasn't until we were a quarter of a mile up the road that we realized this was no easy walk to Haut-Koenigsbourg, but instead a steep, strenous hike to the ruins (CLR team: Becky and I are definitely getting our hill training in!). We spent @ 3 hours hiking, exploring the ruins, and enjoying the sweeping vistas of the valley below and never did make it to Haut-Koenigsbourg as there were other Route du Vin towns waiting for us to see.

When we left Ribeauville, we headed south to Riquewihr, one of the more popular Route du Vin towns, hoping to grab a quick sandwich, see the town and continue our drive south. Riquewihr is surrounded by vineyards and is very picturesque, and it's easy to see why this is such a popular town. The town was packed! We couldn't find a boulangerie anywhere, but found a nice restaurant where we had some Alsatian specialties (Good thing we had a large lunch, as it was a LONG time until dinner).

From Riquewihr we continued south to Eguisheim, named France's "cutest town". We wandered the town center, snapping dozens of photos as we went. By the time we got back to Colmar, it was early evening and we had a concert to go to at one of the local churches. We decided to have dinner afterwards and, after a short respite at the hotel, walked over to the church to hear the "Gregorian Voices".

The concert was awesome!! The group of 8 men (we're still having a debate as to whether they are monks or not) sang a number of religious songs from the 4th and 5th centuries (in Latin), then progressed to 14th and 15th century songs (Renaissance, also in Latin) and ended with some classical pop songs, such as "Sounds of Silence" and "We are the World". Although this was truly one of the highlights of our trip, the concert didn't get over until after 10:00 PM. Trying to find somewhere to eat at 10:30 PM was a challenge!