Day 72: Montreux-Chateau to Mulhouse

April 30, 2025

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It feels like Summer has come to us at last. Sure, it was warm enough to go swimming in Mallorca, but if a place has palm trees it's kind of cheating about Summer, since it's sort of always Summer. But here, Summer is hard to come by, so if the tights and down jacket have come off, that's news!

We headed up the Rhone-Rhine canal in warmth and without headwind.

A flat and calm space to cycle in, hooray.

We are nearing Germany, and we often associate Storks with Germany. So it was that we found not just one, but trees full of these interesting birds.

This tree sheltered not only Storks, but also a Cormorant, Raven, and Blackbird.

Ther Storks were flapping around, giving photo ops for them on the wing.

Down at trail level, lots and lots of touring cyclists were also flapping by. The ones below were from Switzerland, but reminded us of Michel in Nantes, with their recumbent trikes.

It didn't take overly long to reach Mulhouse. Like with all cities, it takes a bit of pedaling to reach the pretty (i.e. old) parts. After some patient travel through uninspiring but not horrible stuff, we reached the main walking street area. We could tell this by the presence of the higher end retailers, but still no inspiration.

Finally we hit the nail on the head, by entering Place de la Reunion. The nail on head analogy is good, because this old centre really amounts to just the one square.

Buildings dating to the 1400s along one side of the square.

The former city hall, occupies another side of the square.

The square is completed with Temple Saint-Etienne (closed).

There was also a fair sprinkling of restaurants in the square. We decided we were really hungry, and chose the one with the most shade for its tables. We forgot about photos for the food that came, just gobbling it hungrily. a big attraction was the "crudites", which comprised shredded carrot, cabbage with carroway seed, and cucumber, with a nice vinaigrette sauce. While we find lots of bread, meat, and cheese on this tour, veggies like that are rare. The beef brochet was flavourful as well, but as is typical in France it was not at all tender. Maybe it was Charollais, used to charging around the grass fields.

While sitting at our table, we looked up what else there is to see in Mulhouse. Tripadvisor came up with Cafe William (Guillaume) Tell. We realized from the GPS that this was just around the corner. In fact we were practically already there. So there was no expedition involved in finding this attraction, we basically just had to stand up and walk 50 feet.

But why William Tell? The story if William Tell is Swiss, and as we read it. Mulhouse used to be in Switzerland. OK.

William, plus son with apple. We can now consider that we have seen all the major attractions of Mulhouse!

We repaired to our hotel, which is the one a little confusingly called the BnB. This chain is much like Ibis Budget, where you are not given a lot of extra space, or a bathtub, or much storage. Yet it works, and importantly for us, our room has a big fully opening window. Sometimes at Ibis the windows have a device that limits the opening. That's makes us wild - we need to breathe!

Tomorrow we will set off on the Alsace Wine Route. This passes North through the area between the Vosges mountains and the Rhine, calling in at more than 70 picturesque towns. Because Alsace bounced back and forth between French and German control, the towns often have names ending in "heim", like Wettolsheim or Kintzheim, or have other Germanic sounding names, like Obermorschwihr! We know it's going to be fun!

Today's ride: 38 km (24 miles)
Total: 2,352 km (1,461 miles)

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