Merry Christmas Eve From France [Van Life Christmas Market Tour]

Whoo-hoo, guys! It got down to 20 degrees last night, but our new plumbing, where we re-plumbed some of the van before we left South America to get it ready for these winter temperatures, held up fine. But there is one little downside to the really cold freezing temperatures, and that is we need to find showers at campsites or somewhere else because we have to drain our shower tank so that that plumbing doesn't freeze. So today we are hoping to find a campground where we'll be able to shower and kind of clean up the van, rejuvenate from this past week of hitting all of these amazing Christmas markets. So today is about errands and resting up and taking care of the van a little bit. Maybe, hopefully, if it gets warm enough, taking the kitties for a walk. But we are right outside, maybe five minutes outside, of a little town here in the southern part of the Alsace region that is supposed to be the most beautiful village in this area of all. I don't know how they can do that, but that's what they're telling us. So tomorrow we will take you for one final walk through for a Christmas market that rolls us right into the amazing holiday season. But first things first guys, we need a shower. Hopefully Kurt has had some luck because this place looks slam-packed. All right, I think it was like $32, so priciest place yet. But they do have showers, they have fresh water, which is what we need. And you got bread. I got a baguette and I got some breakfast chocolate pan. So we have some food. We're out of groceries. And we forgot that all the grocery stores are closed on Sundays. We've got enough groceries, we're not gonna starve. We're not gonna starve to death, but we could probably skip a meal or two anyway. Did we get a spot with electricity or no? We got a spot with electricity, we have showers, so we get everything caught up, done, toilet cleaned, everything. And then hit the road running tomorrow. Yep. Let's go get parked. Good morning from a village that right now we're gonna call Ricky Weir, spelled very unusually. Hopefully we can find a local to tell us how to say it. It is snowing. It was not snowing when we first woke up, but as we drove here it started to snow. This is a small little village. Only 1,600 people live here, so during tourist prime times like the Christmas market, we just discovered it is very difficult to find a place to park. But we did it. We have a parking place and we're headed to the market. So from nine to seven we have to pay to park. Three hours is 10 euros, so we got three hours. I've been eyeballing a new hat at all of these Christmas markets. Where are you from? We're from Florida, the United States. I know it's beautiful, but more warm. More warm, yes. I finally pulled the trigger on one. I'll show it to you in just a second. My old one is 10 years old and it didn't quite cover up my ears. I got ears and I got warm real ears. I should have bought it a few markets ago, but I hated to spend the money when I had one. But this one just didn't keep my ears warm. Look at this snow, guys. All right, those are the kind of Christmas tree ornaments that I'd be buying if we had a house. Those glass baubles were something. This is the perfect breakfast food booth for me and Kurt. On this side, you've got the sausage and potatoes just like he makes in his skillet every morning. Come look at this side. Donuts. Sugar. No, I don't eat that anymore after my heart. I eat oatmeal every morning, but in the old days, it would have been something like that. Donut every morning for breakfast. So in the last village we visited, we were fortunate enough to get some little snowflakes and it was nice. It was just a nice little dusting, but these snowflakes today in what is considered to be one of the most beautiful villages in the whole Alsace region. We have these giant snowflakes and to be honest with you, this is probably the most intensely decorated. Every building has all these pine trees and Santa Clauses and ornaments and mistletoes and poinsettias and big bulbs and flowers and Santas and reindeers and pine cones and just all types of stuff and big polar bears along these timbered houses. What a gorgeous place. Another thing about this beautiful village or small town in the Alsace region is that this is the most historically preserved of all of them and there are several buildings here that date back, I don't know, to the 15, 16, 1700s, 1200s and 13, 14, 15, but there's some really old ones here. Did you tell them how many buildings are here, Kurt? All right, so this is one of the smallest villages throughout the region. 1600 people live here, but it has the third most historical buildings, third only to Strasbourg and Colmar, which are big cities. So, I mean, for the size of the town, they should have like four or five of these buildings, but they have 48 or 49. I can't remember, but it's almost 50 of them. So this village is beautiful for sure. The Christmas decorations along this main street and even the side streets are off the charts. Look at these ladies stirring and rolling, getting ready to make some bread or some cookies. If you could smell it here, I would tell you it's cookies. I was right, it's a cookie shop. Oh, and it smells good. Look at this gingerbread house. Oh, I wish you guys could smell it in here. It smells incredible. All right, this has been a beautiful but short little visit to this little town. And the main reason we're going to cut this one a little short, guys, is I'm sure you can see this snow in the video, but it is coming down. Not only are the flakes giant, but there is accumulation on these streets. So I'm sure there's accumulation out there. And well, we're not used to driving in the snow. We've been on some crazy dangerous roads in South America, hanging off cliffs and bouncing and rocking and rolling. But the ice and snow is a new thing. And so snow is a Florida girl. And well, she'll be a little panicked if we're driving in the weather and it doesn't make sense to anyway. So we're going to try to get on the road before the accumulation gets too bad. We're completely out of groceries. So we need some food. So if we need to hunker down, we need to supply up before we do that. So we're going to head out of this beautiful place. But I do have to tell you, thank you guys so much for being through the holidays. I think one of the things that may not be apparent as we travel in a van is that, you know, we're oftentimes by ourselves. And of course, we meet people along the way, but we are a long way from our family and our friends and our social circle. And we certainly miss that portion of our life. And it becomes more apparent around the holiday times than any other. And so we just really appreciate you guys being along for the journey. We appreciate your comments. And thank you guys for watching and joining the journey. And it's so great to have you guys here. So cheers, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, whatever snow says, whatever holiday you're celebrating, for whatever reason, we're with you. All right, snow has been eyeballing these things since Strasburg, really, I think is when she saw them roasting on the open fire. Yeah, I've never had chestnuts roasted like this. Now, it looks like here they call them macrons. Marrons? I thought it was macrons. Marrons. We'll eat them when we get in the van. Or at least one. We may try it. Let's try one now. All right. The mystery, how do you open these things? They just kind of peel off pretty easy. There we go. Big toss. Are they good? They're good. Open up. Well, we never did find out how to properly pronounce that town. But just to recap, we'll spell it because it's really, really an unusually spelled name. But I think everybody was right. As far as architecture and the buildings, that was a stunning little village. I can imagine that visiting it any time of the year is amazing. But they really do it up good for the Christmas market. More of a traditional market, a lot of things for sale, a lot of very interesting artsy things, and all the foods we've been seeing along the way, and the smells in the air, and then the snow. I mean, we had snow at the village the other day, but this was like big fluffy snowflakes, which made it really, really pretty. In the background, you got vineyards everywhere on the hills going up around this village. But this much snow was not forecast. I think Kurt may have told you that. So we are going to hit the road. We are out of food. Our first stop is to head to an Aldi's to stock up on food, and we'll regroup based on the weather. So let's go for a ride on the snowy, icy roads. So it had stopped snowing when we were in the grocery store, but as you can see, Vanna's on the dash watching the snowflakes fall again. Gotta get some fuel. That's four or five minutes away. Then we're gonna head to our campsite and then do a check on the weather. But we're headed to the city of Colmar, which is supposed to be a bigger city. Not quite as big as Strasburg, where we started out up here, but bigger than these little villages we've been to. It's supposed to have some amazing architecture, right Kurt? Yeah, it's supposed to be a cool, another one of these cool, uh, sort of timber cities, I think. Beauty and the Beast. Beauty and the Beast. Sort of a backdrop or what Disney kind of themed their stuff after, I guess. I mean, it's just all really pretty territory, so I think this is going to be our last city in this region. So hopefully we go out with a bang. So the snow seems to be turning to rain as we get closer to Colmar. Colmar is known as the capital of the wine route through the Alsace region here. It is the biggest city of all of these. It's not as big as Strasburg, but Strasburg's technically not on the Alsace wine route. But, uh, we're excited to get to this city. There should be some really cool stuff to show you here. We can't go right here, Kurt. Got a little thing there that tells us we're too tall to go where it wants us to go. Our first camping parking lot option in the city was full, solid. So we're headed to the second one. Y'all cross your fingers. Option number two, solid, full of camper vans. Oh my god. All right, guys. Our third option kind of tells the story. There are too many motorhomes in the city of Colmar right now. So we pulled back into this camping spot. There are literally 10 camper vans lined up to get in, waiting. We drove past the line because we thought they were parked. On the way out, we saw that they were not. They were waiting. The place is already full to the hill. And I'll be honest with you guys. I know some of you have been around here in Europe traveling for a long time. Keep saying drop iOverlander and go to Park4Night. But our experience in this little bitty short time has been, if you want to find the RVs, use Park4Night. If you want to use, if you want to find parking, use the Google or iOverlander or another method. Maybe it's just because of the Alsace Christmas route, but this place is overloaded with camper vans. So that means we will not be showing you the city of Colmar, at least on this time through here. We have to zigzag back and forth across Europe numerous times to maintain our visa requirements. Who knows? Maybe we get back here in the future. Sorry guys. Let's see what's next. Kirk's doing some researching. So we plugged in the town of Than, T-H-A-N-N, which is south of here. It is about a 40 minute drive. What is special about Than is it is the very southern end of the Alsatian wine route. So I guess it's a good place to wind this whole Alsatian tour down. So that's where we're headed. Hopefully we can find somewhere to park the van there. All right, G is out in the snow. We'll see what he thinks. What do you think? Your feet are getting cold. Aren't your feet cold? Aren't your feet cold, buddy? We made it to Than and we found the perfect free campsite. Just a short walk from the downtown city square and backed right up to a pretty river. Right, Kirk? Right there. This little parking lot is designed for campers and there are four of us here right now. And you may notice that there is a quite a bit of snow down here. I think they've been getting a little more snow than we've been getting to the north. This Florida girl's got to figure out how to walk in this stuff, Kirk. So unfortunately, guys, it looks like this market is not open. It's a small market. Maybe it's only a weekend market. But the websites I found said it would be open. But we can tell it clearly is not. But it does not take away from how pretty these trees are. And look at this church. So I can imagine this would be bustling if it was open. Each one of these shops would have some something it was selling. Some craft, some food, some drink. But we've taken you guys to enough of the markets that I think you can use your imagination and know what this place would be like if it was booming. But like Kirk said, it's kind of nice just to see it all nice and quiet and enjoy just the pretty of the decorations. The town architecture is amazing. And this beautiful church. This might turn out to be just the perfect way to finish our Christmas market tour off. So many Christmas trees. Some of them look like they've probably been decorated by the kids that live here in this town. Oh wow. Wait till you guys see the front of this church. Don't we now our gay apparel? The ancient Yuletide carol. See the blazing Yule before us. Strike the horn, join the chorus. Yuletide treasure. Fast away the old year passes. Hail the new year lads and lasses. Sing we joyous all together. Heal us of the wind and weather. It is almost time to wind this video down. We are rolling right into Christmas and we hope you enjoyed this Christmas market tour through the Alsace region of France. A couple of things. First, maybe we do this again next year but pick a different country. Maybe we do it German or Swiss or Austria. Tell us if you enjoyed this this burst of Christmas videos to kind of bring the holiday spirit into everybody's house. If you did, maybe we'll do it again next year. And second, we want to wish everyone happy holidays. We love sharing this journey with all of you guys out there. And we may not all know you all personally but our YouTube family feels a lot like family to us. We really enjoy the interactions and the comments and all the good graces y'all send to us. The prayers through the hard times, the goodwill wishes. It's just really nice having you guys here with us. So we are thankful for you this holiday season and no matter what holiday you you celebrate as you know it's quite clear for us this Christmas. But be kind, spread good cheer, love your neighbor, all that good stuff. The next time we see you guys it'll be after Christmas and almost time to roll into a brand new year. Happy holidays guys. We'll see you in a few days. Cheers. If you like this video be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos. And don't forget you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos. Cheers guys!