Alsace – the adorable towns of Mulhouse, Colmar and Riquewihr

I had a really great and relaxing weekend! Perfect amount of sightseeing and relaxation!

 

Friday afternoon: I left to head over to the train station at about 5pm for our 6:04pm train. I figure it always makes to give my self plenty of time to deal with the French transportation system. I got there and met up with Dana and we stood waiting for the platform to be announced for our train. Exactly 10 minutes before our train was scheduled to depart, the monitor switched from showing that the train was going to leave on time, to that it was cancelled. Honestly I think maybe Dana and I shouldn’t take French trains together, we just have such bad luck with them… We headed over to the ticket office and after complaining to the ticket agent for a while, we got booked on a train that departed an hour later than our original train and went directly to Mulhouse, so we were only about 45 minutes late. We arrived in Mulhouse and Dana’s penpal Jessica and her mom Veronique picked us up at the train station. We headed back to their house and had a nice dinner (since we missed dealing with dinner during all the scrambling to figure out train stuff). I had a delicious polenta, salad and chicken and Dana had an Alsatian specialty (but it had bacon on it, so I didn’t try it). We spent some time talking to Jessica and Veronique before we happy went to sleep.

 

Saturday: Saturday morning was great because we were able to sleep in until about 10am, which we never do on the weekends here. We had a nice relaxing breakfast and then headed out with Jessica to pick up her friend Marie and go explore a little bit of Alsace. The first town that we visited was Colmar. It is this adorable little town north of Mulhouse (about 1/3 of the way to Strasbourg). It has the beautifully colored houses that were spared by the destructions of the French Revolution and many other wars. Throughout the village there are numerous canals and it is called la Petite Venise. We walked through the town and as it turned out, Marie was pretty knowledgeable about the town. The bright colors of the houses were originally used to denote what type of store could be found there. Blue meant it was a fish store, red, a butchery, etc… Also, the little x’s that can be found all over the buildings have meaning has well – the more x’s under the windows of the house, the more children there are in that house. Further, as we looked along the canals, Marie pointed out to us the indoor town marked that was accessed by the canals (goods were brought to market along the canals) as well as a building who had a little rectangular potion protruding from the building, hanging right over the canal, that served as the toilets and emptied directly into the canal. After exploring a bit, we sat down for lunch in the main area of the village. I had a delicious Alsatian specialty called Bouchée à la reine made with flaky pastry, very tender chicken, mushrooms, other vegetables and a fabulous sauce. After we finished lunch, we headed back to the car and ran into a little children’s parade for carnival. It was so cute with all the little kids all dressed in their costumes and reminded by so much of Purim parades in Israel (fitting timing since Purim is Thursday the 8^th). We headed over to the next little town called Riquewihr, just a little bit north of Colmar. This was a much smaller town but adorable and well-known for their famous Christmas shop that we visited. It really was just like a little Christmas wonderland inside. Next, we drove back to Mulhouse and met up with some of Jessica’s friends for a little bit. Unfortunately, while we were parking our car, Jessica and another guy ended up scraping their cars against each others and so we decided to head back after just a little bit of wandering around and shopping in Mulhouse. We stopped to wash the car in the hopes that it would help the situation. We actually used an old-school car wash where you pay and then you use the hoses and brushes to clean your own car. It was certainly different than what I am used to! We headed back to the house and hung out for a bit until dinner. For dinner we had veal and a delicious salad followed my a really great chocolate éclair. After dinner we all watched wipeout together in French which was quite amusing.

Sunday: Sunday morning we also slept in a little bit and then had another simple, but enjoyable breakfast. We spent the day relaxing, watching both French and American shows and just talking. After that, had had a fantastic lunch. We had spaetzle with veal and mushrooms in a fantastic sauce as well as a salad, followed by a delicious chocolate cake (almost more like a pumpkin or banana bread, but chocolate). By that point, it was time for us to pack up our stuff and head over to the train station. We had a surprisingly easy trip back to Lyon. It was sad ending such a great weekend staying with such generous and truly nice people!