Our Journey to France!

A rocky departure...and a miracle!

We were so excited when we were dropped off at the San Francisco International Airport. It was our first trip out of the country and we were dying to get to France! Unfortunately, we hit some bumps between here and there and ended up missing our connecting flight to Paris... After missing our flight (thanks United...) we spent the entire night on the phone trying to salvage our originally short trip. After arguing with United Airlines AND Kiwi.com, we extended our stay in France for a small fee.. Truly we owe our trip to an incredible Norwegian Airlines employee who informed us he could get us tickets on the next flight to Paris...and came through! After a grueling 48 hours in Newark, we were on our way!

Landing in France the next day was an incredible feeling! But we still had an entire day left of traveling to get to our destination. An uber from the airport to the train station and a long ride across the country and we found ourselves in Colmar. From there, we found a taxi and after another twenty minutes, we finally arrived in Eguisheim for dinner at Heuhaus! We spent our first official day in Eguisheim and we still couldn't believe we finally made it! We walked all over the cute little town, exploring their shops and going inside of the church there. And of course, we had to enjoy the amazing food! Obviously escargot was on the menu!

Since our original plan was to stay for three days, we only packed enough clothes...for three days. So we needed to do some laundry. The nearest landromat was in the little neighboring town of Colmar. So we hopped in a taxi and got our laundry done then, spontaneously, decided to walk to a nearby bar. We were surprised to see that Colmar was beautiful! And while it was nearing Easter Sunday, they had decorated the entire town in bright pastels, giant easter eggs and ribbons. There was also a cute little market going on that we had to walk through. We didn't expect to spend almost the entire day in Colmar with all of our clean clothes in a backpack...but it was worth it!

With so much excitement going on the last few days, we decided to take things easy and stay around Eguisheim. Spending some time at the hostellerie or wandering around the streets. Jaden had to buy some local cheese and sausage from a small cheese stand...let me just say.. they were amazing! Paired with some famous local wine, we made a nice lunch out of it!

For Easter Sunday, we decided to take a nice walk through the vineyards that literally cover the countryside. We packed a small lunch and then followed the signs through the vineyard, learning about the different kinds of wine produced in the area, about the grapes that grow there and a bit of history surrounding Eguisheim and other nearby villages. Wine there is a tradition and they are most famous for their sweet white wines. Which...are delicious! After treking through the vineyards for nearly two hours, we made our way back to Eguisheim.

We decided to go on another adventure and visit a town nearby called Riquwhir. That is pronounced Rick-veer for those of you scratching your heads. I know I did. We got a ride from our favorite taxi driver, Hando and spent the day wandering around town. We saw many colorful homes and buildings, many bakeries and restaurants, we even stopped by another cheese shop for Jaden. The man loves his cheese... We spent the whole day there and then finally returned to Eguisheim. Being our last night in our favorite new town, we decided to revisit Heuhaus for dinner. We were surprised when the waitress walked up and recognized us from our first night here! Shows you how small the town is.

We got up extremely early the next morning to get a taxi ride to the bus station....because the train stations were all protesting. Instead of taking the bus to Paris in two hours...it would take us six hours by bus to reach the city. We had a long time to nap while on the bus, making a short stop for lunch then back on the road. Eventually, we reached Paris. We only spent one day in Paris so we decided to make the most of it..by walking all the way across the city. After grabbing lunch at a cafe, we walked all the way to Notre Dame, which is incredible! Absolutely amazing! from there, we walked to "lovelock bridge" where couples would put their initials on a lock and fasten it to the chain link bridge. From there, we walked all the way to the Eiffel Tower, reaching it around six at night. Tired and just wanting to get back to the hotel, we grabbed an uber and rode back.

The next day, we packed up all of our things and said goodbye to France. We flew to Iceland..because..that's where our layover was. So we stopped there, grabbed some lunch, tried to pronounce some of the words on the walls. The time came to depart...and it got delayed an hour. We shrugged it off then wandered around the airport some more. We came back to see it had been pushed back..another hour. Unbelievably..this continued for four or five hours. We were supposed to depart at 4pm and didn't end up boarding the plane until around 10pm. At this point, we were tired of airports and just wanted to get back home. We flew all night and FINALLY landed in the San Francisco Airport at midnight. We were never so happy to be back home!