France and Germany, Day 11: Lyon to Stuttgart
Another early start, rising at dawn to breakfast and then to pile back into the bus for the final stretch back to Stuttgart.
The ride was long but utterly uneventful. We took a somewhat different route back to Germany-on the way down to Lyon, we'd crossed into Switzerland at Basel, and then driven along the foot of the Alps to Geneva before crossing into France.
Now, on the return leg of our journey, we drove north through France from Lyon, through the lushly forested Vosges hills of Alsace, crossing over into Germany near Kaiserstuhl. In contrast to the arid, rocky limestone hills of Provence, the landscape was now gently rolling fields of ripening corn, apple orchards, vineyards, and the bright yellow-green of tobacco fields, rising to forested mountains and vineyards in the distance.
Our mustached, hearty bus driver suddenly became voluble once we entered German-speaking regions again, cheerfully pointing out landmarks and tidbits of local history in his thick Swabian accent (I'd gotten better at understanding this particular German dialect over the week, since most of my fellow travelers spoke it).
We arrived in Stuttgart around 6pm, and after hearty farewells to my fellow travelers, I was back at my aunt and uncle's house by 6:30-ish, (just ahead of a major downpour…the weather in Germany was cool and cloudy and very much like autumn after the hot summer weather in Provence).
I related some of my adventures over a supper of homemade bread, German cold-cuts, and fresh plums and blackberries from a neighbor's garden, and then retired early, tired out by a busy week and my very early start. Tomorrow's plans are somewhat weather-dependent, but we're either going to the nearby town of Esslingen, a very old city dating from the AD 600s, which has a beautifully-preserved old town with medieval and Renaissance buildings, or (if it's still really rainy) we'll tour the Mercedes musueum.
The ride was long but utterly uneventful. We took a somewhat different route back to Germany-on the way down to Lyon, we'd crossed into Switzerland at Basel, and then driven along the foot of the Alps to Geneva before crossing into France.
Now, on the return leg of our journey, we drove north through France from Lyon, through the lushly forested Vosges hills of Alsace, crossing over into Germany near Kaiserstuhl. In contrast to the arid, rocky limestone hills of Provence, the landscape was now gently rolling fields of ripening corn, apple orchards, vineyards, and the bright yellow-green of tobacco fields, rising to forested mountains and vineyards in the distance.
Our mustached, hearty bus driver suddenly became voluble once we entered German-speaking regions again, cheerfully pointing out landmarks and tidbits of local history in his thick Swabian accent (I'd gotten better at understanding this particular German dialect over the week, since most of my fellow travelers spoke it).
We arrived in Stuttgart around 6pm, and after hearty farewells to my fellow travelers, I was back at my aunt and uncle's house by 6:30-ish, (just ahead of a major downpour…the weather in Germany was cool and cloudy and very much like autumn after the hot summer weather in Provence).
I related some of my adventures over a supper of homemade bread, German cold-cuts, and fresh plums and blackberries from a neighbor's garden, and then retired early, tired out by a busy week and my very early start. Tomorrow's plans are somewhat weather-dependent, but we're either going to the nearby town of Esslingen, a very old city dating from the AD 600s, which has a beautifully-preserved old town with medieval and Renaissance buildings, or (if it's still really rainy) we'll tour the Mercedes musueum.