Bitche, France

During these cold, winter months I have been doing tons of research on places we could explore and see in one day. I have been looking forward to Spring for months now and with my list in hand, we ventured out on our first Spring day trip... Bitche, France! 

Bitche, France is less than an hour from the KMC area. We were recommended by a friend to take the scenic route so we first headed up to Vogelweh to get onto 270 towards Pirmasens. It really was a beautiful drive and only added about 20 minutes.

When we first arrived in Bitche, we ate lunch at a little bakery called Antoine. No one spoke English and high school french from over 10 years ago can only get you so far, but we were able to get a delicious meal. After our lunch we drove around the city a little bit before heading to the citadel.

There is parking right near the entrance (and its free). The citadel is NOT stroller friendly and the tour is mostly inside and it is very dark and very cold so bundle up! We decided to do the audio tour (10 euro each) and thought it was well worth it. The audio tour is run by Bluetooh so when you walk around, you start hearing the guide. Once you enter the underground tour, there is a movie that plays different clips in each room. It was told from the point of view of a French soldier during the Franco-Prussian war.  The movie is very interesting. It is not very child friendly, in one of the first scenes after the introduction, you see dirty, messy, chaotic war scenes. Their was also a scene where soldiers were rounding up women and children, and clearly pulling a screaming woman away from her children and forcing her to face the firing squad, on the spot. It then switches to a naked person running away covered in blood.

The citadel was once an old castle but was destroyed after the capture of Bitche by the French in 1624. The citadel was restored and strengthened in 1740 into a fortress. There is much history in this site, including a 230 day siege.