Writing now on the 4th. Yesterday’s itinerary (i.e., the 3rd) was to drive from Würzburg to Alsace. We left Würzburg after breakfast, at 9 A.M. The drive was a fairly easy one, though I say that, of course, as a passenger and not a driver. As with the preceding day, W. and K. alternated driving.
W. and K. suggested we stop first at Saint-Hippolyte in Alsace, a small, pretty village where they’ve spent time and stayed a night in the past. W.’s hope was that we could find a restaurant there where we could have a meal of choucroute garnie with Alsatian wine. When we got to Saint-Hyppolite, however, we found no restaurants open other than a small café that seemed to serve things like pizza.
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| Scenes in Saint-Hippolyte, Alsace, France |
We drove and drove up and down the streets of the village, stopping to ask about restaurants, and were given directions to places that turned out to be closed because we’d arrived after 1:30, when restaurants usually close in France after serving their midday offerings. Then W. thought perhaps if he drove up the mountain to Haut-Koenigsbourg, we might find a restaurant there. As we turned to drive up the mountain and I saw the sign for Haut-Koenigsbourg, I realized that Steve’s cousins J. and R. took us there — on 4 July 2009, my travel diary tells me.
Realizing this gave me a better sense of exactly where we were in Alsace. We also saw a sign for Riquewihr, to which J. and R. took us after we’d toured the castle at Haut-Koenigsbourg. So seeing these signs and remembering our visit here in July 2009 made me realize that Saint-Hippolyte is very close to Riquewihr, just some six miles, and that W. and K. had brought us to the same wine-growing area of Alsace to which J. and R., who owned a winery in Baden long in Steve’s family, had introduced us.
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| More scenes in Saint-Hippolyte, Alsace, France |
Saint-Hippolyte is in many ways far less touristy, more unspoiled, than Riquewihr, as I recall the latter village from our visit there in 2009. This gives it a great deal of charm, but also assures that some of the amenities people expect when they tour a village like this aren’t there — like restaurants open for meals in the first part of the afternoon or evening!
W. was dumbfounded at the fact that all restaurants in the village were closed. His recollection of previous visits there had led him to think the village is a more lively tourist destination, though he chose it for us to visit precisely because it’s a bit off the beaten path and not overrun by tourists. But as he kept grumbling, a village that depends heavily on tourist euros for its income can’t afford to make it hard for tourists to have meals.
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| View of Black Forest from park bench in Saint-Hippolyte, Alsace, France |
No place was available for us to eat at Haut-Koenigsbourg, as it turned out, so we drove back down the mountain and parked at a spot in Saint-Hippolyte where we’d seen a nice small park with benches looking over the pretty rolling landscape and vineyards into the Black Forest, and had a picnic lunch.
As we sat eating boiled eggs and ham and cheese sandwiches with apples, a blackbird sang beautifully in a horse chestnut behind us. It sang and periodically flew to a fountain in the park and bathed itself. A man arrived in his car at the farmhouse right across the road from where we were eating and picked raspberries growing in the garden there, then drove off. The entire scene was idyllic, very peaceful and enchanting, and the picnic was more to my liking than a heavy meal of choucroute garnie — of which W. has fond memories from his student days in Strasbourg — would have been.
The picnic lunch included slices of cake that W. and K.’s friends in Würzburg, whom they visited the evening of the 2nd, had sent for Steve and me. They had made a cake to celebrate W.’s birthday, and when they and W. and K. had cake on that evening, they wanted to share the cake with us and sent us slices by W. and K. The slices were so large that Steve and I split one slice, a kind of layered cake with a white cake batter on top, a darker batter that seemed to have coriander and possibly cinnamon in the middle, and blueberries on bottom.
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| Boucherie Pfertzel Chez Sophie, Saint-Hippolyte, Alsace, France |
After we’d eaten, we then walked around Saint-Hippolyte, where I snapped a lot of photos that really capture the place, for me, at least. We ended up at a boucherie-charcuterie, Boucherie Pfertzel Chez Sophie, where we bought a selection of locally made sausages, with plans to eat these in our days in Mulhouse, where we think we won’t need to eat full hot meals each day. W. handled the purchasing, asking questions (in French) about the provenance and composition of this or that sausage, with the woman behind the counter speaking a French so slow and clear that I could understand easily what she was saying.
I have to say that I do find this part of Alsace really pretty. The drive after we crossed the Rhine took us along a road parallel to the Vosges, which run north-south not far from the French-German border and the Rhine. The villages in this area of Alsace are for the most part nestled up against the mountains and are very attractive to look at as one drives, with vineyards reaching up the sides of the mountains in many places.
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| Hotel de la Bourse, Rue de la Bourse, Mulhouse, Alsace, France |
From Saint-Hippolyte in the middle of the afternoon, we then made our way to Mulhouse, which is only some 30 miles from Saint-Hippolyte. We checked into the hotel right away, and have found it really nice, much more comfortable and well-run than the place we stayed in Würzburg. It’s the Hotel de la Bourse on Rue de la Bourse in the center of the city, and seems to be part of the Best Western chain.
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| Auberge des Chevaliers, Mulhouse, Alsace, Germany |
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| Choucroute garnie, Auberge des Chevaliers, Mulhouse, Alsace, Germany |
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| Orange Mécanique beer, Auberge des Chevaliers, Mulhouse, Alsace, France |
After we’d settled in and rested a while, we gathered in the lobby and walked around the old part of Mulhouse nearby, ending up at a restaurant recommended by the folks at the hotel desk called Auberge des Chevaliers close to the old Rathaus, or, as it’s now called, the Mairie de Mulhouse. We spent a delightful evening there sitting outside in the plein air seating area, enjoying a meal of choucroute garnie with locally brewed beer, a beer called Orange Mécanique from Strasbourg. The evening couldn't have been nicer, sunny and cool as the sun began to go down.
Service was wonderful. The waiter was nonplussed by our request to split two plates of choucroute garnie between four of us, and when the plates arrived, we were glad we'd made that decision. Servings were enormous, with each plate piled high with roasted pigs' knuckles, two kinds of sausages, and slices of roast pork that W. and K. identified as Kassler Rippchen, something they’ve cooked for us a number of times.
In addition, there was a mound of sauerkraut, and with it, several boiled potatoes. The only discordant note was the cumin flavoring in the sauerkraut, which is far from traditional but increasingly popular in sauerkraut-loving areas of Europe.
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| Mairie de Mulhouse, Mulhouse, Alsace, Germany |
After we’d eaten, we walked around the plaza in front of the Mairie and admired the Mairie building, which was built in the first part of the 1500s and is an imposing big rectangular building taking up a big part of one side of the square, painted in a rose color with bright gold ornamentation and painted features. Near the Mairie is a church that we didn’t visit, called, I think, Saint-Étienne, a Calvinist church that’s supposed to be the largest (or tallest?) Protestant church in France. We didn’t go inside, though K. said it’s well worth seeing and that she’d take us on a tour in our stay in Mulhouse.
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| Saint-Étienne church, Mulhouse, Alsace, Franc |
Then back to the hotel for a night’s rest….
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