In the Alsace region near Colmar.

We continued on the N74 to Langres before turning east towards Lamarche. We had made reasonable time through but would have been better without the number of heavy transports that use these smaller roads rather than pay the toll on the motorways & therefore congesting the road system throughout the whole country.




We finally cleared the congestion & by 1.00pm we had both Contrexville & Epinal behind us. By now the scenery around us was changing with more hills now quite evident & by the time we arrived at St-Die-des-Vosges we had arrived in the mountain area of the Alsace. As we weren't taking the direct road to Colmar we didn't get too phased by the notice that the mountain tunnel through to Colmar was closed & pushed on taking the minor roads along the more picturesque route.
Well, we don't know what we did but we ended up on the wrong road going in the wrong direction completely. Of course we turned back & eventually found our road through to Ribeauville & what a little gem of a place this is it is picture postcard perfect as it is covered with flowers all along the streets as you drive through-it is fantastic. We spent time just taking in this amazing scenery ( all the pics in this blog are from Ribeauville ) & after about an hour we headed about 5kms south to find our B & B in yet another equally as pretty village called Riquewihr. This was probably quainter than Ribeauville as it was mainly a walking only main street with the odd delivery van interupting the peace & quietness.
We booked into our very comfy surroundings & relaxed a while before we headed out for a meal in Riquewihr. We had been told about a local dish called " Bakhoff " that I should try as it was made with 3 meats pork,beef & lamb. When it came to the table I nearly fell off my chair, it was a medium sized casserole dish with the meats plus potatoes & sauekraut filled right to the top.
I tried valiantly to make a dint in this over the top sized meal but gave up after having my fill, it was very flavoursome certainly the type of meal one would have during winter in this part of the world.
After a nice light breakfast we walked around Riquewihr in the morning just to get a better appreciation of this beautiful area. We bought some wine for our friends in Geneva before heading into Colmar for a quick visit. Unfortunately, even though Colmar was a lovely town with an old district it didn't compare with what we had seen on the previous day.
We made very good time on the motorway down to Belfort then to Montbeliard before taking a more scenic route through to Pontarlier, just south of there we crossed into Switzerland & then it was a short drive to Morges which is just west of Lausanne. From there the major motorway took us to where we turned off 20kms east of Geneva to find Bob & Anthea's house in the very nice rural village of Chavannes de Bogis. We quickly located their house & were soon exchanging greetings with Bob. It was great for Bob & Sara to catch up again because it was back in 1972 that they last saw each other when they both worked for the Hotel Tahara'a in Papeete. They enjoyed reminiscing over the good old days at the Hotel. See you.