J made the statement early on today: "We could not have picked a better day for this." "This" was our bike trip from Seléstat to Colmar, along La route des vins d'Alsace, and he was completely right.
We woke up at 7, in time for a lovely breakfast at the hotel, then pedalled over to the train station, where we boarded our train for Seléstat, a town about 20 minutes south of Strasbourg. We quickly happened upon two locals who were able to direct us to une piste cyclable, a bicycle route, but their expertise was not the best part of the interaction. The coolest part, for me, was that they spoke Alsatian, a mixture of French and German that is the regional dialect. They spoke to me in French (in which I have regained my confidence, the product of many sustained conversations during the days I was by myself, as well as a few well-placed compliments), but would consult with each other in a language I kind of understood, but mostly did not. I was so happy I got the chance to hear it.
Then J and I were on our way, zooming through acres and acres of vinyards, corn, and sunflowers. We stopped in Bergheim around 11 to have a degustation with a lovely man, who inherited his vinyard and winery from his father. Three sweet sips of white wine later, we got back on the road with a bottle of our favorite in my basket. We wandered through Ribeauvillé, and then headed up into the foothills, where the biking got a little harder, but the views got even more impressive. We finally hit the brakes in Colmar around 4, unable to believe how beautiful the entire ride had been. Between our aching quads and the bottle of white that we neatly put away while sitting under various trellises and sprawled on lawns through the trip, we we able to soundly sleep slumped-over in our seats on the train home. Now we have showered away our grime, and eaten a serious dinner, and are calling it a night. Another early wake-up call tomorrow, for our 7 am train to Caen!
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