The next morning we packed up camp and drove a few kms south of Colmar to a small town called Eguisheim. Eguisheim is both a "plus beau village" (most beautiful village) and has been a “4-star village fleuri” since 1985! To become one of the “plus beaux villages” in France, the population must be less than 2,000 people, have at least 2 protected sights or monuments in the area and have the support of the village to become a designated village, then there is an evaluation process and so on. There are 157 designated villages in France and they are always a great place for a stroll or café au lait. The “ville or village fleuri” designation is separate and ranks towns from 1 to 4 stars for how many flowers they have throughout the town. We picked up the walking map from the TI and started off on our self-guided walk. The main square had a fountain with a wall behind it that was decorated with beautiful flowers. Behind the wall you can see the château from the 8^th century and the birthplace of Pope St. Leo IX in 1002. The town was built in the medieval times which meant that there used to be ramparts and the town is organized in a circle. We started walking in one way, and soon enough, we'd walked the whole outside loop of the town. The streets were really cute and some are quite narrow. Of course there were flowers everywhere so we took lots of photos!

After leaving Eguisheim, we drove along the Alsace wine route along the smaller roads through the vineyards. The hills here were much steeper in some areas than those in the Champagne region so we were able to get some beautiful views from higher up. As we wound our way through the vineyards, Anoop noticed an interesting tower in a small town named Kaysersberg which he thought he might like to check out. We headed to the TI again to grab another town map and wandered our way up to the old castle. We got to climb the tower which gave us an incredible view over the town below and of course, the vineyards. Kaysersberg was worth the stop for the view, but we decided the town itself was not as nice as Eguisheim.

We drove on to Riquewihr and stopped quickly at the TI to get brochures to help us decide how to spend the next day and then headed in to camp just 1.5 km outside of town.