We live very close to France. About 14 kilometers, actually. We often hop over the border to see a movie (the French play American movies in their original English language more often than the Germans who seem to prefer to dub over movies into German), go to a yummy restaurant, or buy French groceries (and yes, we love to say to each other "Let's go the France, today!"). But ever since we moved here we've been wanting to ride our bikes over to the border. On Saturday, we finally did!
This past week I've been making cookies, eating cookies, sitting on the couch finishing up a big quilting project, and watching athletes half my age breaking world records at the Olympics so maybe I just felt inspired to get us off our butts, but we finally had a non-rainy Saturday and so we ventured out to France!
We made our first stop just a couple of blocks from home to buy some sweet and declicious white raspberries from the self-serve food stand as a biking snack and then rode on through several little German villages and beautiful fields and orchards and nature preserves toward the Rhine.
So we walked our bikes the last quarter of a kilometer or so to the ferry that crosses us over to France.
Goodbye Germany!
Once in France we walked into the little town laying just on the other side of the Rhine and found a grocery store with bike-repairing supplies and made camp in front of a closed resturant to make repairs.
We muched on our bakery snacks bought in one of the German villages then made our way back to the Rhine, having accomplished our mission and tired out by that flat tire.
An old World War II barrack on the French side of the Rhine, not used since the French were trying to keep the Germans on the other side of the river:
In passing through one of the German villages, we noticed the local Bicycle Society was having a Summer Festival so we made a stop for some festival food.
We made one more stop at the self-serve food stand for some homemade pickles and plum jam and felt very satisfied (if exhausted) arriving home having finally accomplished this little goal we made for ourselves so long ago! Take that Olympic medalists!
5 comments:
What a fabulous day - really - thanks so much for sharing it! :)
A great day indeed. I would love to be able to traverse so easily from country to country.
I bet Lance Armstrong never crossed over an international border during his Tours.
That sounds like a wonderful day!
So fun! Lovely pics. That is also the cutest photo of Karl! You should frame that one.
Zach...ACTUALLY...Lance Armstrong has biked through here! Apparently, once in a while, the actuall Tour de France runs it's course through our little corner of the Black Forest...or so say the locals. And they also say that Lance has a particular affection for this corner of Germany.
And Sarah...Karl told me I should swap out that photo of him because he looks odd but I agree with you...it is the cutest photo ever of him!
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