August 2006. France and Luxembourg.
Titisee Lake, August 6, 2006.
Titisee was on our way to France, while still in Germany. It's situated in the south of famous Schwarzwald (Black Forest) region. It is probably nice to spend a vacation there but I didn't get why the place was so packed with tourists. One could think that everything was free on that day. We wanted just to make a short stop because we had time, so we pedaled a boat for half an hour. The lake is not very big but quite deep - up to 60 meters.
Le Tholy, Grande Cascade. August 7, 2006.
The region of small mountains, Vosges, is west from Alsace, and it is a popular destination for French vacationers. Mountains are covered with forests, with many walking and probably climbing paths. I have found a hotel that was located near a waterfall, Grande Cascade, in the village (or small town) of Le Tholy. I have booked two nights in the "Hotel de La Grande Cascade" (to be said with ceremonial accent). I would not be surprized to find the hotel not as nice as on its Web page, but this one was hmmm... good. Old, "full of traditions" and decades old tobacco smoke, with creaky stairs and doors. The room key was so big an heavy as to prevent guests from forgetting to give it back. The view from our room was not that bad though, waterfall hiding behind the trees about one kilometer away.
After taking breakfast, we went to see the waterfall. Feet got heavy with dew immediately, but the day was going to be hot, so we didn't care much.
This snail that we met on our way, pictured below, was so big and thick that you see it here close to its actual size.
The waterfall is pretty big, though the water stream is rather weak. It's height that makes difference.
About half an hour walk from the big waterfall there is another, a smaller one. You can drive to both directly but most of people park near one of them and walk to another and back.The path is a forest road, easy even for kids.
In the afternoon we went to Gérardmer, a small resort town located on the lake bearing the same name. First we had a lunch in a creperie that I've noticed when driving to hotel the evening before. The crepes were good, though of course not as good as my home-made crepes (or pancakes), and we had to wait so long for them, that our kids would probably destroy the restaurant if we sat for another five minutes. And it didn't help our hunger completely, so we went to a supermarket right after the restaurant.
We finished the day by going to Cascade du Géhard, a smaller waterfall on a river flowing through a forest and less impressive than the Grande Cascade in Le Tholy.
Lapoutroie, Cheese Factory. August 8, 2006.
Everywhere in this region you see the signs offering cheese degustation. All different kinds, but more often Munster, local specialty. Being cheese addicts, we could not miss the chance. Our probably most loved cheese, Roucoulons, is manufactured southwest from Alsace, in Franche-Comte, and it would be too far to go there and most likely the factory doesn't offer anything for visitors. In the factory in Lapoutroie, indeed, you can see some of production process and they also have a shop where you can taste and buy many different cheeses, both produced by this factory and others.I assume that because the production runs in cycles, on different days you can see different stages. You walk through the building and can see the production halls through the windows. But all halls were empty with exception of the packing room. A lonely guy was feeding the packing machine with, I think, Munster cheese.
Another lonely guy was serving visitors in the factory shop, where we tasted many different kinds but unfortunately could not buy a lot as we wanted to spent couple of more days on the road.
The factory has two locations, one in the village, purely production, and another one, which we visited, right on the roundabout where several bigger roads cross outside the village. You can't miss it, looking for two plastic cows pictured below.
Southern Alsace. Castle Haut Koenigsbourg. August 8, 2006.
Our next hotel, and last one that was booked, was in Strasbourg and we had almost the whole day to get there after visiting the cheese factory in Lapoutroie. We had to go east close to French-German border and then drive north to Strasbourg. Every small town and village in this region is proud of its vineries. Vineries are everywhere and as you can see on the next picture, wine production is so important for local economy that the most common monument you see will not be related to some historical heroes but rather be something about wine. Like this barrel at the entrance of the City Hall in some small town.
The castle Haut Koenigsbourg stands on a high mountain with a magnificient view over the whole region. The interior is stuffed with heavy old furniture for those serious middle centuries folks. And their kids, like this child bed:
In the same area, when going down form the castle, you can also visit the monkeys' mountain (Montagne des Singes) populated, according to our guide, by real monkeys accimatized somehow to French weather. But we didn't want to stop and went further north to Strasbourg.
Part 2: Strasbourg and Luxembourg.