Another stunning morning, this campervan morning. Once again blue cloudless sky, a few starlings in the air, huge nests sit on rooftops each with a pair of white storks and the rumble of slow moving nearby traffic. It does feel a tad cooler. The ruined red stone castles of Saint Ulrich and Girsberg there keeps stand proud like sentinels atop the hill watch over the town. A day of coffee, croissants, walking, pictures and people watching yesterday.
The mass of older grey haired French, German and Dutch walking down the Grand Rue, with the slow dawning realisation that I have now joined the older wrinkly grey haired tourists, walking down the avenue. Paula Hawkins wrote
“There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”
There is a feint enjoyment in people watching, singles, couples, touring groups squeezing and hustling through narrow streets and medieval court yards, window shopping, picture taking, sitting on benches. Shop doorway grabbed moments between locals, Crowded coffee shops spill out onto tight cobbled streets, earnest coffee grasped conversations. The air rich with European wide accents and chatter.
Ribeuville oozes history, it drips from its narrow cloisters and stone archways ; buildings built within touching distance, Wattle and Daub, heavy wooden shutters, 15th century here, 17th century there, the French mixed with the German and Swiss designs. Rutted cobblestones, dark corridors, streets snake left and right, broken castles on high mountains over look the town and surrounded on other sides by planted vines on imposing hillsides. A place we stopped utterly at random and ticks all the boxes as if by accident. Another day to catch up with ourselves and settle into holiday mode, before moving on. Lovely days people.
“ I like to watch people… I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. Ray Bradbury.
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