Seltz to Saverne

This day started out as one beautiful, amazing ride....When we went to leave our campground the attendees weren't there yet for us to pay. It was a weird place. It was mostly people who had permanent trailers and then a couple small patches of dying grass for the tent campers. So us and another touring couple were kind of sitting there all packed and ready to go but not knowing what to pay or do. Since we were on a tight schedule we opted to leave a payment of 13Euro and take off. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure we over payed. So here we are, kind of hauling ass out of town and we're imagining we're going to get chased down. It was kind of fun, not going to lie. On this day we experienced our first French pastry of the trip. Good great googly-moogly, it was a fantastic introduction. 

Apparently there are bike trails that follow the canals in France and apparently we could have somehow rode from Seltz to Saverne and on to Paris all on canals. We, of course, didn't do this, as it would have taken far too long. As the ride progressed we hit some major hills; Greg is a climber, so he loved them, of course. Normally I am a baby about hills but for some reason this day, I just rolled with it. There was some doozies but I took my time and took in the scenery. It was stunning. It was a good day. On our last climb we noticed some pretty gnarly looking storm clouds quickly rolling in, by the end of our epic down hill, it was raining. I'm also pretty sure we ended up on a Tour de France route that hadn't rolled through yet.

no, not an IKEA but a Volvo dealer. We just loved the contrast of bright colors

As with a lot on this trip, we got rained on. It started when we were getting to the city outskirts and I think we laughed. It had become so commonplace to get rained on. Once we got onto the city's main historic drag, we found the tourist office, a campground, and a store for dinner supplies. After a long up and down ride we finished with a little insult to tired legs - an uphill climb to the campground, but of course.

Still waking up. Damn good quiche though

you could get visually drunk on this city

Saverne is a very picturesque town(aren't they all?) but unfortunately we only spared an hour to check out a few of the buildings and the main drag. The tourist office speaks English and has free wifi, by the way. We found our way to the canal and headed west, towards the Tour de France route we were meeting up with and Paris.