The first day of our vacation was amazing!! After landing at around 7:30 AM in Zurich we waited through customs, collected our baggage and went outside to grab our rental car... Car... It was more like a bus!
In a land of small, fast, zippie cars we are driving a bohemath, the small streets and interesting parking situations have made it rather fun to try and get around without scraping walls, breaking mirrors or frustrating the locals (we've definitely done two of the three). From the airport the first thing to notice was the color. There were green rolling hills!
Coming from the drought and fires of the dry US west, this was a big deal! It was amazing to see and feel the rain again, it had been so long! So in our crazy big van and dipped into French wine country (miles and miles of beautiful green rows of grape vines.)
We pulled into a small French town, Eguisheim, looking for a festival. The rain kept them from throwing the party but we enjoyed looking around the town, admiring the architecture, looking for storks and eating some quiche.
Leaving that town we plunged through more wine country for a larger town, Riquewihr, to explore and after some interesting driving manuvers down the tiny streets in our big van, including one the left a bit of a scrape, we bought a large piece of some 'stinky' cheese. This lady had some huge wheels of cheese, it was one of the craziest things I've ever scene. We were lucky to have Aarika pulling together some french to coordinate the purchases. When, for lack of her actual name, 'the cheese lady' went to cut us a slice she used a blade that was equally as huge as the wheel. She knocked off a piece that was about an inch thick and we started to tear through it. 20 euros seemed like a ton for a chunk of cheese, but we munched on that thing for days!
There were 8 of us (including infant Ben) and it took us three days to finally kill that thing, not a bad purchase!! Riquewihr turned out to be a fun little place to walk around and the French weren't as stereotypically mean as we often hear. The only slightly strange moment I had with the French was when i took a picture of a gelato stand and the owner came over and asked that i not take pictures of his food! Well, at least he said please...
We had a good time eating crêpes & macaroons, analyzing the architecture and exploring cultural differences.
Leaving Riquewihr we headed for our first castle visit at Hautkoenigsbourg. The rain had calmed to near nothing by this point but it was still a soggy drive and walk up to the castle grounds. It really reminded me of typical portrayals of Mideval times in Europe. When we finally got to the foot of the castle a light mist hovered around generating a damp, chilly sensation, it felt as though a French guard out to lean out from the wall, shout "you mother was a hampster and you father smelt of elderberries" and proceed to launch cows at us.
It was great to walk around and see how these people lived and operated back in the day. As we avoided crushing some precious escargo, on the way back to the car/van, we reflected on how funny it was that because of our oddly shaped vehicle we have been getting some unique privileges. When looking for parking at the castle we parked on the road dedicated for tour buses and ours must qualify as a bus because a guard came by and directed some other cars to leave and just walked by us with a pleasant 'bonjour.'
As we moved on to Baden Baden for our first nights rest we could look back and see the castle atop its great green hill that overlooks all the small wine towns below.
We got in town with time to do one of the most anticipated activities of the trip, relax and rejoice in the 'baths' of Baden Baden. From what was explained to me, Baden Baden is a retirement-esk city where some of Germany's wealthiest individuals chose to live. Apparently it's also a hot spot for spas... Literally... It's water it heated geothermally!! Our hotel was just around the corner from on such bath so we went on in. I felt like i was in some classy James Bond ritzy hang out. They had lockers for each guest activated by wristbands and nice showers for rinsing before you walk into the indoor pool (bath) area where there are no children splashing, running and laughing but rather adults relaxing and soaking in a many different levels and temperatures of pools. After some soaking and exploring we found sauna rooms, aroma sauna rooms, heat lamp baths, hot tubs, cold tubs, bubble seats, massaging jets and some... nude only locations. Say goodbye to travel stress, that Bath just soaked and soothed my worries away. Some Chinese food and a good nights sleep, not bad for the first day of our european vacation!
