Day 17 - Horbourg Wihr

Day 17—Tuesday, May 26, 1992

As early as we got to bed the night before, we didn’t get up all that early, but still in time for breakfast at the hotel. Breakfast was eaten outside on the hotel’s ground. It was an absolutely splendid day, unfortunately our breakfast fare was lacking—specifically, lacking a croissant. After breakfast we packed the car, checked out of Le Home, and drove the short distance into Beaune. We parked the car outside the walled town and continued on foot.

Beaune is a tourist town, plain and simple. Nothing grandiose, just lots of shops, eateries, a couple of medieval attractions, a wine market, and more shops. We checked out a few shops, at one of which Sharon bought a crystal parrot, then headed to the much-recommended Marche aux Vins (wine market). We got there right before the morning tour began, but wine at 11:30 a.m. didn’t much appeal to either of us, so we decided to wait for the afternoon tour. In the meantime, we visited a medieval hospital called Hotel Dieu—it was an interesting place, most notable for its roof made of bright colored tiles, a polyptych called “The Last Judgement,” and an authentic hospital odor. We really could have down without the sickening smell of the place, which left us nauseated.

After Hotel Dieu we hiked around town some more, then headed out of town to a nearby trailer park called Les Cent Vignes , which according to Rick Steves served good, reasonably priced food. The only problem was they didn’t serve any food at this hour. So we used their facilities and hiked back to town under a blazing sun. We ended up eating sandwiches on the doorstep of a store, which was about all I could handle given the problems my stomach was causing. Then we headed back to Marche aux Vins. Nauseated or not, I was going to sample the best wines of Burgundy, and that’s what we did—lots of ‘em. We bought a souvenir cup for $2 and paid the $8 admission price and started drinking. The entirely unsupervised tour began up top with the cheaper white wines and ended up down below with the $80-a-bottle reds. We had countless cups of wine, rating them as we went. By pure coincidence, I’m sure, we were partial to the $80 reds, so we concentrated on drinking them. During our wine-tasting spree, we ran into a couple from Los Angeles named Bill and Jamie. Bill knew his way around the wine market having been there before and was pretty handy with a video camera as well—he’s the one who shot Sharon and me sampling our favorite wine and interjected the phrase, “Pure wine satisfaction.”

Before we left Beaune, we stopped at a Lou lingerie store, but the prices were too high to buy. But it was nice stuff.

Feeling much better, we drove out of Beaune via the autoroute to the Alsace region and the Rhine River, singing songs we made up along the way. We exited the autoroute right before it went over into Germany and got on a narrow, nearly vacant road that ran along the Rhine. The trip so far had featured many impressive drives along rivers; this was not one of them—the French side was for the most part flat, uninteresting forest interspersed with modern power and various other industrial plants, and the German side appeared to be much of the same. All the same, I enjoyed the ride. We exited the river road at route N415, a right turn would have taken us right into Germany, but our plan was to find a hotel in France and drive into Germany for dinner. The first town we came to was Neuf-Brisach, another medieval looking walled town, only the tourist industry hadn’t gotten to this one yet. The place was actually kind of enchanting and spooky at the same time. I waited in the car, while Sharon checked one of the town’s hotels. The cost was only 210 francs a night, but a melancholy aura pervaded the room and the bed mushy, so I vetoed the place. And in so doing we left Neuf-Brisach without ever really getting to see it, and as it turned out, we never did get dinner in Germany or even set foot in that country on this trip.

We drove to Colmar. Near the outskirts of the town, we stopped at Hotel La Cerf, a modern, comfortable inn with the trappings of a lodge. We checked into one room, but due to a language misunderstanding we were put in a room with two single beds, so we checked into another room, one without a television. All this wouldn’t have been a big deal had the night manager not been the rude and charmless woman she was. Then we drove to a nearby restaurant featuring Spanish cuisine for dinner. The restaurant was homey, the food tasty, and the waiter/manager very pleasant. It was a good meal for two very hungry travelers.

Following dinner, we returned to our hotel room, where we drank some beer, enjoyed the lovely view out our window, and tested the bedsprings.

HIGHLIGHT: The red wine in the wine market in Beaune of course.

LOWLIGHT: Not making it to Germany.

NOTES: Another hot day, with some light rain in the early evening as we drove along the Rhine. The fact that our adventure was nearly over was beginning to sink in. It was a sinking feeling.

REFLECTIONS FROM 2020:

Per the receipts from the trip, the Spanish restaurant at which we ate in Colmar was called either Le Jade or Le Tage at 57 Route Neuf Brisach, 68000 (the charge slip says the former but the itemized bill and online references give the latter). I found an exterior photo of the place on Google Maps, but it looks to be closed.

The address printed on the receipt for Hotel La Cerf appears to be “68 Horbourg.” No more detail than that is provided and the number could be something else. An internet search revealed three hotels (1, 2, 3) in or near Colmar with “Cerf” in the name (it means “deer” or “buck” in English), but I highly doubt that any are where we stayed based on how they look and/or where they’re located. The Hotel L’Europe, at 15 Route de Neuf-Brisach, 68180 Horbourg Wihr, however, is on the course we took, fits the description I provided, and its appears vaguely familiar to Sharon and me. So my guess is that at some point over the past 28 years the hotel’s name was changed.