On to the Alsace
Sep 11th, 2008, 05:04 PM
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On to the Alsace
When I last left you we were getting up early to head to the Alsace from Normandy. Our first stop was to be Beaumont Hamel. This is a memorial of the Volunteer Newfoundland Regiment’s battle in WW 1. Canadians claim this memorial as their own although Newfoundland did not actually join Canada until 1949. We stopped for lunch on the way in a little town called Auchonvillers ( called Ocean Villas by the Tommys in WW 1). There is a lovely traditional English Tea room in this unexpected location. The food and service ( and tea ) were excellent. The teahouse has a very interesting history which you can read about on the walls and after lunch you can wander between the chickens and sheep into the back yard and walk into the trenches behind the house. They ask no admission fee although there is a bucket if you would like to make a donation. In this area the trenches were built to access the basements of each house as a base for supplies. What these people have done is have professional archaeologists dig out a portion of the trench and restore it to a very realistic replica using the same materials the soldiers would have used. I was very glad the girls had seen this more realistic version before seeing the mocked up versions at future memorials where the “trenches” were lined with a cement wall faked up to look like sandbags.
Beaumont Hamel itself is a great memorial. The large Caribou statue stands astride a man made hill of stones. It is beautiful to look at and offers an outstanding view of the battlefield. Admission is free and there are tour guides available to take you around the site and explain the battle. This battlefield has not been “tidied up” so you get a very good feel for the events of the day. There is also an interpretive centre attached to the site. It is only a 45 min drive to Vimy. So off we went.
The Vimy memorial was one of the things I was looking forward to on the trip and we were very disappointed when a cloudy misty day turned into pouring rain and wind as we arrived. As KR commented we certainly got a feel for the actual battle, as this was the type of weather they contended with. If you are heading to Vimy a must read book is Jane Urquhart’s recent book The Stone Carver. It gives a great in look into the lives of those the soldiers left behind and an interesting fictionalized version of the construction of the monument. We went to the monument first and looked around. Enjoyed it and the view as much as we could. Took photos of names on the monument, which represent our local boys. We were too late to go down into the tunnels, so hopefully I will have another chance at this part of France. The people who run the monument suggest if you would like to tour the tunnels you book in advance.
We drove from Vimy to Ribecourt la Tour where we stayed in a lovely B and B called Le Clos Xavianne. It is a working farm with a little mini museum of local farm equipment and stunning walled garden you are invited to tour. This was KR’s favourite of all the places we stayed, this MAY be because we are also farmers and he had the same type of tractor and combine!! Although it is listed with 3 wheaties I would give it 5 stars. There is also a kitchen you can use if you are staying for several days and would like to cook for yourself. I know this may be too much detail but I must tell you that we ate that night in Cambrai and had the best meal we had during out whole vacation. The B and B recommended a place called La Taverne de Lutece. It had several local families eating in it, always a good sign. For 100€ four of us had dinner, dessert and shared a very nice bottle of Burgundy. We all ordered different cuts of steak and were served huge 1” thick cuts perfectly cooked and a whole plate of 4 different kinds of vegetables. We almost stayed an extra night in Cambrai just to eat there again.
The next morning I got up early and wandered through this beautiful town taking photos and enjoying the quiet. After a large breakfast with homemade jams, we headed to Bourlon Woods. My grand – father fought and was wounded here in Sept/Oct 1918 in the ending stages of the battle of Canal du Nord. This memorial is beautifully laid out and virtually unvisited. The large trees and hillside location provide great views of the countryside. I found the connection to the war I expected to get at Vimy and left flowers in the nearby graveyard after again taking photos of several grave markers for people back home. Eventually we left and headed off for the most marathon drive of the trip. We were 4-5 hours in the car driving to the Alsace.
We stopped in a picturesque town called Steinselz because KR can trace his great grandfather back to this town. It was interesting to walk through although the rain was dogging us again. Although we had hoped to fit in the Magino line museum in Lembach we ran out of time that day. We were able to see some of the existing cement Magino embattlements we happened to drive by and luckily had our own well-educated interpreter in KR. We stopped in Hunspach as it had been recommended as a pretty local town but to tell you the truth it creeped me out. It is like the Stetford Wives version of the Alsace. Early in the evening we arrived at our gite in Dambach la Ville. Their website is www.lacourzaepffell.com. I could not recommend this place more strongly. It is a lovely example of a half timbered home beautifully preserved. Bar none this was the girls and my favourite place to stay. The girls had an attic room with loads of atmosphere and skylights and the main floor had living room, bathroom, kitchen, living room and, oh joy at this point in the vacation, a washing machine!! The price is also very reasonable.
Spent the first part of Thursday morning walking around the grape vines outside this beautiful walled town. There is a lovely chapel above town where you can enjoy the most beautifully carved lime wood alter I have ever seen. I must mention now that some how in the packing although I had three separate file folders in which I had been keeping all my stuff Paris/Normandy/Alsace somehow when we got there the only thing in the Alsace folder was my Michelin map, I had for gotten all my books and printed stuff. It made for a completely different kind of trip as my map was covered with all these little coloured flags ( like lawyers use ) and they would point at a certain town and say for example walls or cemetery based on interesting stuff I had read on this chat group. That was what we ended up basing our itinerary on. Thurs afternoon we started off driving south and ended up at Haut Koenigsbourg. We had a lot of fun puddling around here and it has some beautiful areas, I can’t say anything about the view as we were once again shrouded in mist. It also has quite a mixture of styles of architecture and interior design. The castle itself was rebuilt at the end of the 19th century and certainly has that polished feel of a rebuild to it. We had almost as much fun at the ruin a short hike from the castle. From here we went and did some wine tasting. I won’t spend a lot of time on the details of our wine tasting. I certainly don’t want to be too negative but I will say I am a very experienced and enthusiastic wine taster and purchaser and in spite of many efforts I didn’t have much luck or fun wine tasting in the Alsace. We did a quick walk through at Ribeauville and hated it after the first block and left quickly. The Alsace is filled with many beautiful towns, well kept decorated and geared to tourists, Dambach la Ville, Itterswiller, Bergheim etc. There is really no reason to be packed cheek by jowl with bus loads of tourists hitting only the hotspots. We went on to Kayserberg and had a great time browsing their shops, bought some blown glass and then went up to the ruins of chateau before home for a nice dinner and evening of games.
Friday was our day set aside for the Black Forest. Both girls really wanted to cross into Germany and see another country and climb a mountain. If you’re going to climb a mountain might as well go for the biggest, in this case Feldberg at 1480m. We had a rough time getting through Frieburg where we unfortunately needed to stop and get info on the black forest. The town is a mess with construction right now and traffic congestion cost us time and patience. We stopped at a little hiking store to buy back packing food. We had some very nice bread we had brought with us and bought some great german salami. Also cruising the cooler found a few cans of grapefruit beer which I picked with a, “I’m on vacation I’ll try anything once” attitude. The view from the top of Feldburg is great but I know both girls have come back to Canada with a greater appreciation of the treasure we contain in our own geography. As Canadians we always feel what everyone else has must be better and I know they were expecting more from the famous black forest. It’s hard to impress someone who grew up hiking Banff and Jasper with forests and mountains. That picnic on top of Feldburg I will remember as one of the highlights of the trip. We found an isolated spot in the sun and on the mountain top and ate salami and drank beer and soaked in the sun. I will tell you now I don’t know about any other time but right there on the top of the mountain grapefruit beer was the perfect thing and tasted great. On the way back out of the schwarzwald we stopped in Todtnau and went for a toboggan ride!! For 8€ you take a chair lift up Hasenhorn mountain and come down on a Rollercoaster track. Its full of bumps and turns and spirals and is a blast. You sit in an individual car and control your own speed. It would have been a perfect end to the day except we weren’t finished yet.
I had run into a very nice German couple at one of the Alsacian wineries and asked about wineries on the German side. They very enthusiastically told us about the Kaiserstuhl region and even drew us a map. It is centered around Vogtsburg, just east of Freiburg and it blew my socks off. The vines are all stepped on the mountain side like Greece and Crete. It is spectacular to drive through and the reds blew my socks off. The vines are still young so these wines will only get better. The people at the places we stopped couldn’t have been nicer and we purchased some memorable bottles. We had dinner that night in a great pizzeria in the middle of Dambach la Ville. It is all locals and you have to follow the crowd as there is really not a sign but it is right around the corner the Maison Jaune (or Yellow House) which is the variety store in the middle of the walled village. After dinner and our bottle of German wine the girls and I took another bottle of wine and climbed up above the walls to a beautiful bench surrounded by flowers and trees which sits just beside Ste Sebastian. For 3 hours we watched the stars, the lights of the town and listened to the church bells and talked. It was a magical time for me, as you don’t often get young adults in that kind of atmosphere where talk flows so freely.
Saturday was our final day and we wanted to relax and enjoy ourselves more than try to squeeze a lot more in. We went to the morning market in Barr. Good for buying food and produce but not aimed at tourists so not a lot of artisans. We got great spring rolls and a cooked chicken here. We then went to St Odile. This is totally worth going to, prob my favourite thing in the Alsace. The building is amazing, the setting is amazing, the view from the terrace is amazing. If you want hiking trails there are miles of great trails all around the mountain top. Even if you’re not catholic the Stations of the Cross are amazing to admire just as art work. Unlike other “holy” buildings we had visited on our trip this one carries with it an air of spirituality which spoke to me. I would mark it with Notre Dame in Honfleur and St Sebastian in Dambach la Ville as my favourite churches of the trip. Went back to Dambach la Ville and spent a relaxing afternoon hiking in the grape vines and shopping for souvenirs and trying to taste more wine. What I did find in the Alsace is they make quite a fine whisky. I developed quite a taste for scotch before I visited Scotland and am a big fan of single malts ( Highland Park my fav ). The Alsace whiskey is smooth and a little fruity because they age it in wine barrels. There is no peat of course so it will never be the real thing but I was quite pleased to bring a bottle home.
Spent the evening, after dinner made of all we had purchased in Barr, sorting and packing and weighing ( with the bathroom scale borrowed from land lord ) and then repacking. Of course when your choice of souvenirs is big pieces of pottery, hand blown glass and liquor you have to pack carefully to avoid breakage and weight problems. In case you have lost count I had bottles of Benedictine, Alsace whiskey, Pomelle , Rose liquer ( purchased in Germany on a wim and still unsampled, does anyone know what it tastes like) and 4 bottles of wine. All arrived back in Canada unbroken.
I would anticipate some of the response to this itinerary. We spent 3.5 days in the Alsace and never saw Obernai or Colmar or lots of other things. We had spent the first 2/3 of our vacation ticking off from lists of things we wanted to get done in Paris and Normandy. We wanted to just BE in the Alsace and not worry about getting things done and I have no regrets, but by all means don’t use this description as a how to for the Alsace. Take what you like and leave the rest…but don’t miss St Odile!!
Beaumont Hamel itself is a great memorial. The large Caribou statue stands astride a man made hill of stones. It is beautiful to look at and offers an outstanding view of the battlefield. Admission is free and there are tour guides available to take you around the site and explain the battle. This battlefield has not been “tidied up” so you get a very good feel for the events of the day. There is also an interpretive centre attached to the site. It is only a 45 min drive to Vimy. So off we went.
The Vimy memorial was one of the things I was looking forward to on the trip and we were very disappointed when a cloudy misty day turned into pouring rain and wind as we arrived. As KR commented we certainly got a feel for the actual battle, as this was the type of weather they contended with. If you are heading to Vimy a must read book is Jane Urquhart’s recent book The Stone Carver. It gives a great in look into the lives of those the soldiers left behind and an interesting fictionalized version of the construction of the monument. We went to the monument first and looked around. Enjoyed it and the view as much as we could. Took photos of names on the monument, which represent our local boys. We were too late to go down into the tunnels, so hopefully I will have another chance at this part of France. The people who run the monument suggest if you would like to tour the tunnels you book in advance.
We drove from Vimy to Ribecourt la Tour where we stayed in a lovely B and B called Le Clos Xavianne. It is a working farm with a little mini museum of local farm equipment and stunning walled garden you are invited to tour. This was KR’s favourite of all the places we stayed, this MAY be because we are also farmers and he had the same type of tractor and combine!! Although it is listed with 3 wheaties I would give it 5 stars. There is also a kitchen you can use if you are staying for several days and would like to cook for yourself. I know this may be too much detail but I must tell you that we ate that night in Cambrai and had the best meal we had during out whole vacation. The B and B recommended a place called La Taverne de Lutece. It had several local families eating in it, always a good sign. For 100€ four of us had dinner, dessert and shared a very nice bottle of Burgundy. We all ordered different cuts of steak and were served huge 1” thick cuts perfectly cooked and a whole plate of 4 different kinds of vegetables. We almost stayed an extra night in Cambrai just to eat there again.
The next morning I got up early and wandered through this beautiful town taking photos and enjoying the quiet. After a large breakfast with homemade jams, we headed to Bourlon Woods. My grand – father fought and was wounded here in Sept/Oct 1918 in the ending stages of the battle of Canal du Nord. This memorial is beautifully laid out and virtually unvisited. The large trees and hillside location provide great views of the countryside. I found the connection to the war I expected to get at Vimy and left flowers in the nearby graveyard after again taking photos of several grave markers for people back home. Eventually we left and headed off for the most marathon drive of the trip. We were 4-5 hours in the car driving to the Alsace.
We stopped in a picturesque town called Steinselz because KR can trace his great grandfather back to this town. It was interesting to walk through although the rain was dogging us again. Although we had hoped to fit in the Magino line museum in Lembach we ran out of time that day. We were able to see some of the existing cement Magino embattlements we happened to drive by and luckily had our own well-educated interpreter in KR. We stopped in Hunspach as it had been recommended as a pretty local town but to tell you the truth it creeped me out. It is like the Stetford Wives version of the Alsace. Early in the evening we arrived at our gite in Dambach la Ville. Their website is www.lacourzaepffell.com. I could not recommend this place more strongly. It is a lovely example of a half timbered home beautifully preserved. Bar none this was the girls and my favourite place to stay. The girls had an attic room with loads of atmosphere and skylights and the main floor had living room, bathroom, kitchen, living room and, oh joy at this point in the vacation, a washing machine!! The price is also very reasonable.
Spent the first part of Thursday morning walking around the grape vines outside this beautiful walled town. There is a lovely chapel above town where you can enjoy the most beautifully carved lime wood alter I have ever seen. I must mention now that some how in the packing although I had three separate file folders in which I had been keeping all my stuff Paris/Normandy/Alsace somehow when we got there the only thing in the Alsace folder was my Michelin map, I had for gotten all my books and printed stuff. It made for a completely different kind of trip as my map was covered with all these little coloured flags ( like lawyers use ) and they would point at a certain town and say for example walls or cemetery based on interesting stuff I had read on this chat group. That was what we ended up basing our itinerary on. Thurs afternoon we started off driving south and ended up at Haut Koenigsbourg. We had a lot of fun puddling around here and it has some beautiful areas, I can’t say anything about the view as we were once again shrouded in mist. It also has quite a mixture of styles of architecture and interior design. The castle itself was rebuilt at the end of the 19th century and certainly has that polished feel of a rebuild to it. We had almost as much fun at the ruin a short hike from the castle. From here we went and did some wine tasting. I won’t spend a lot of time on the details of our wine tasting. I certainly don’t want to be too negative but I will say I am a very experienced and enthusiastic wine taster and purchaser and in spite of many efforts I didn’t have much luck or fun wine tasting in the Alsace. We did a quick walk through at Ribeauville and hated it after the first block and left quickly. The Alsace is filled with many beautiful towns, well kept decorated and geared to tourists, Dambach la Ville, Itterswiller, Bergheim etc. There is really no reason to be packed cheek by jowl with bus loads of tourists hitting only the hotspots. We went on to Kayserberg and had a great time browsing their shops, bought some blown glass and then went up to the ruins of chateau before home for a nice dinner and evening of games.
Friday was our day set aside for the Black Forest. Both girls really wanted to cross into Germany and see another country and climb a mountain. If you’re going to climb a mountain might as well go for the biggest, in this case Feldberg at 1480m. We had a rough time getting through Frieburg where we unfortunately needed to stop and get info on the black forest. The town is a mess with construction right now and traffic congestion cost us time and patience. We stopped at a little hiking store to buy back packing food. We had some very nice bread we had brought with us and bought some great german salami. Also cruising the cooler found a few cans of grapefruit beer which I picked with a, “I’m on vacation I’ll try anything once” attitude. The view from the top of Feldburg is great but I know both girls have come back to Canada with a greater appreciation of the treasure we contain in our own geography. As Canadians we always feel what everyone else has must be better and I know they were expecting more from the famous black forest. It’s hard to impress someone who grew up hiking Banff and Jasper with forests and mountains. That picnic on top of Feldburg I will remember as one of the highlights of the trip. We found an isolated spot in the sun and on the mountain top and ate salami and drank beer and soaked in the sun. I will tell you now I don’t know about any other time but right there on the top of the mountain grapefruit beer was the perfect thing and tasted great. On the way back out of the schwarzwald we stopped in Todtnau and went for a toboggan ride!! For 8€ you take a chair lift up Hasenhorn mountain and come down on a Rollercoaster track. Its full of bumps and turns and spirals and is a blast. You sit in an individual car and control your own speed. It would have been a perfect end to the day except we weren’t finished yet.
I had run into a very nice German couple at one of the Alsacian wineries and asked about wineries on the German side. They very enthusiastically told us about the Kaiserstuhl region and even drew us a map. It is centered around Vogtsburg, just east of Freiburg and it blew my socks off. The vines are all stepped on the mountain side like Greece and Crete. It is spectacular to drive through and the reds blew my socks off. The vines are still young so these wines will only get better. The people at the places we stopped couldn’t have been nicer and we purchased some memorable bottles. We had dinner that night in a great pizzeria in the middle of Dambach la Ville. It is all locals and you have to follow the crowd as there is really not a sign but it is right around the corner the Maison Jaune (or Yellow House) which is the variety store in the middle of the walled village. After dinner and our bottle of German wine the girls and I took another bottle of wine and climbed up above the walls to a beautiful bench surrounded by flowers and trees which sits just beside Ste Sebastian. For 3 hours we watched the stars, the lights of the town and listened to the church bells and talked. It was a magical time for me, as you don’t often get young adults in that kind of atmosphere where talk flows so freely.
Saturday was our final day and we wanted to relax and enjoy ourselves more than try to squeeze a lot more in. We went to the morning market in Barr. Good for buying food and produce but not aimed at tourists so not a lot of artisans. We got great spring rolls and a cooked chicken here. We then went to St Odile. This is totally worth going to, prob my favourite thing in the Alsace. The building is amazing, the setting is amazing, the view from the terrace is amazing. If you want hiking trails there are miles of great trails all around the mountain top. Even if you’re not catholic the Stations of the Cross are amazing to admire just as art work. Unlike other “holy” buildings we had visited on our trip this one carries with it an air of spirituality which spoke to me. I would mark it with Notre Dame in Honfleur and St Sebastian in Dambach la Ville as my favourite churches of the trip. Went back to Dambach la Ville and spent a relaxing afternoon hiking in the grape vines and shopping for souvenirs and trying to taste more wine. What I did find in the Alsace is they make quite a fine whisky. I developed quite a taste for scotch before I visited Scotland and am a big fan of single malts ( Highland Park my fav ). The Alsace whiskey is smooth and a little fruity because they age it in wine barrels. There is no peat of course so it will never be the real thing but I was quite pleased to bring a bottle home.
Spent the evening, after dinner made of all we had purchased in Barr, sorting and packing and weighing ( with the bathroom scale borrowed from land lord ) and then repacking. Of course when your choice of souvenirs is big pieces of pottery, hand blown glass and liquor you have to pack carefully to avoid breakage and weight problems. In case you have lost count I had bottles of Benedictine, Alsace whiskey, Pomelle , Rose liquer ( purchased in Germany on a wim and still unsampled, does anyone know what it tastes like) and 4 bottles of wine. All arrived back in Canada unbroken.
I would anticipate some of the response to this itinerary. We spent 3.5 days in the Alsace and never saw Obernai or Colmar or lots of other things. We had spent the first 2/3 of our vacation ticking off from lists of things we wanted to get done in Paris and Normandy. We wanted to just BE in the Alsace and not worry about getting things done and I have no regrets, but by all means don’t use this description as a how to for the Alsace. Take what you like and leave the rest…but don’t miss St Odile!!
Sep 11th, 2008, 05:24 PM
#3
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I love reading about Alsace, thanks.
Your link to the gite isn't working for me, how about this one:
http://www.gites-alsace.com/index.htm
Your link to the gite isn't working for me, how about this one:
http://www.gites-alsace.com/index.htm
Sep 11th, 2008, 05:55 PM
#4
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Sorry I thought I had double checked the link address but I threw in an extra letter. It should be www.lacourzaepffel.com
Jun 7th, 2009, 04:53 AM
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Thank You for these great comment about our Pizzeria, to see more about: http://lafontaineapain.synthasite.com
