Husseren-les-Chateaux to Colmar

July 2, 2024

Chores

Today we ride back to Colmar for one night before heading back to Germany. We are starting to feel wistful as our trip winds down, thinking of how much we love riding in France. We took our time packing up after a leisurely breakfast; after we get back to Germany we will no longer have to stuff our loose tea into tea bags or tea baskets for breakfast. In our experience, France just doesn’t do a regular pre-packaged tea bag - the more fuss you have to engage in at breakfast the better!

Loose tea that you spoon into tea sacks. It’s quite fussy.

The ride back to Colmar was considerably less eventful than the one out of town to Husseren two days ago. We took paved roads rather than muddy goat trails and rode through Eguisheim which is a well trodden tourist town. It was one of the few local towns in Alsace not bombed in WW2 so it looks very “preserved.” (The Alsace, being so far east in France, was one of the last areas of France to be liberated after the battle of Alsace starting in November 1944 to early February 1945). There are a lot of opportunities for wine tasting all over the little vineyard towns and Eguishem was no exception, but since we have done plenty of wine- tasting already (with dinner every night) we did not feel the need.

Just one of the many vinters visitors can visit in the Alsace.

In Colmar we checked into the Novotel, which actually was a pretty nice one. The Novotel company is clearly on a remodeling kick and our room was brand new.

Colmar is quite lovely/atmospheric/quaint.

The creator of the Statute of Liberty was from Colmar, Frédèric Bartholdi.

Dave’s job today was to do laundry and mine was to figure out dinner.

Figuring dinner out in France is sort of a dance. They strongly prefer you book a table ahead of time and absolutely feel no compunction in turning you away without one, even when the restaurant is only half full or you’re very early to arrive. But then, making a reservation is complicated too. Rarely do restaurants have online booking. The choices then are to walk in and book a table face to face, or call. Walking in face to face worked the best for us except that French restaurants close after lunch at 2 pm and don't reopen until dinner service begins, so if you're thinking about booking after 2 pm your sunk. On the other hand if you call before 2 pm, they won’t pick up because they are busy serving. I am sure there is a sweet spot in there, but we never figured it out.

All that being said, we generally managed to get fed, and fed well. If our hotel had a restaurant I would email them ahead of time to book a table or use online booking in some of the more touristy areas. Sometimes we would ask at our hotel if they would call for us and indeed that was what I did today at the Novotel. Before we ask the front desk clerk we judge the situation. If they were friendly and helpful at check-in we go down when it’s not busy and ask if they will call for us. If they do, almost always when they give the booking information to the restaurant they just identify us as “two Americans,” no names needed! As a last resort Dave will call; he has serviceable French. So yeah, despite the hurdles we have managed to eat quite well on this trip.

Back to today, the lady at the Novotel booked us into a restaurant in the Petite Venise neighborhood, a famous, picturesque area of Colmar.

Dave’s assignment, laundry, on the other hand, didn’t go as smoothly as my dinner assignment. We located a laundry 0.3 km from the hotel so he decided to walk. The reviews said you needed coins so we got some that morning at our hotel when we checked out. He was prepared. Unfortunately, when he arrived the lights and electricity at the laundromat were off and a hysterical lady and her daughter were in tears because their laundry was locked in a washer! Does this have a familiar ring to it? She had called the owner and was waiting for him to come open the washer door. Dave showed the appropriate level of empathy; after all, if he couldn’t sympathize with her plight, nobody could.

Obviously this development meant the need for a change in laundry venue, so he found another location, started walking, and called me. He decided then he would come back and get the bike because the new venue was a longer walk away and, of course, it was starting to rain. After the additional fussing around, he managed to complete his task. We had had no lunch so he scrounged some chips and a beer from the Novotel and we watched the end of the day’s Tour- always a fun way to while away the hour between 4 and 5 pm! Tadej Pogacar won in a mountain stage up the Galibier, putting some time in on Jonas Vindegaard.

Our last French dinner that night turned out to be a pork knuckle from this old-line Alsatian restaurant, Winstub de La Petite Venise.

Dave loves braised pork knuckle and we enjoyed sharing this one, and it caused us to revisit our last memorable pork knuckle dinner, two years ago in Cesky Krumlov, Czechia. In Czechia the vegetable accompaniment was a pickle; today’s veggie sides were shaved celery root and shaved carrot. Why we travel…..to relish the local differences in food.

Pig knuckle (actually, I think it's a shank) is so succulent when cooked low and slow, and this one proved the point.

Today's ride: 10 km (6 miles)
Total: 2,189 km (1,359 miles)

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