In the morning we had breakfast at a café that we had selected the previous night. By 10.45 we were back on the cycle path towards Strasbourg, still following the Canal de la Marne au Rhin.
At this point I had the impression that we were entering the Alsace region properly and the towns and villages started looking the way that I had come to expect from this region. At Waltenheim-sur-Zorn we decided to divert from the canal path to look around the village. It was a collection of farms, barns and residential buildings, almost all of which were old with a wooden structure. Some newer buildings appeared in between the old ones.
At 12.45 we started to feel hungry again, but a promising-looking place near Moulin-des-Moines wasn't open for business on Easter. We turned off the cycle path in Vendenheim where two restaurants were marked on the map, but at 1.20 p.m. none of them were open. Consequently, we stopped just outside Vendenheim and used our trangia stove to have some pasta at a bench next to the canal. It was windy and cold enough for the fingers to hurt. An hour later, we were on our bikes again ready to tackle the remaining distance to Strasbourg.
From here, the canal passed through built-up area, leading past the European Parliament before circling around the centre of Strasbourg. In order to get to the centre, we had to leave the canal and ride along roads for about half an hour. We stopped for a coffee and to find a place to stay for tonight which took us about an hour. At 5.50 p.m. we checked into the Montemps budget hotel right next to Strasbourg's central train station. The hotel turned out to be newly built with small, but very practical and reasonably equipped rooms. Today's ride had been 53km.
In the evening, we admired the historic wood-frame houses of P'tit Paris and bought enough cheese to last us for the rest of the holiday.
No comments:
Post a Comment