The city that cheers
The Hindu : ‘Vadam check. Pulikaachal, check. Rice and rava-dosai mix, check. Right, we’re all set!’ It was a bitterly cold morning, late December, and we were heading off on atour to the Alsace region of France, home to some of the world’s celebrated white wines. (But we preferred agmark food products,since we didn’t particularly fancy escargots.) Drenched in the low winter sun’s brilliance one minute, engulfed in a thick blanket of fog the next, it turned out to be a rather interesting six-hour drive across Holland’s characteristic polder-scape. Past Germany’s verdant Rhine valley and gently rolling snow-dusted hills; to France, where the majestic Vosges vineyards et al, rose from the misty plains, delicately silhouetted against a dull-orange twilight sky…Voila, we had arrived in Alsace! The 170 km long wine route, easily ranking high among France’s prettiest regions, stretches all the way from Strasbourg, in the North, to Mulhouse (near Basel, Switzerland) in the South, meandering through 100-odd medieval villages and towns.Our Alsatian experience began, in Bergheim, (the village we were staying in), which sat prettily in the lap of the Vosges. Driving through a magnificently preserved 17th Century archway, we got to our apartment-hotel La Cour Du Bailli. Its elegantly frescoed façade, charming central courtyard with overhanging wooden balconies, well-appointed rooms with thick wooden rafters and polished antique furniture, gave us an inkling why the rooms here are zapped-up months in advance! Bergheim is a stone’s throw from some of the most beautiful places along the wine route; the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of Colmar, with itsmuch-photographed ‘Petite Venice’ district; the typically Alsatian half-timbered houses of Kaysersberg; pretty flower-decked wells in Obernai; grand towers and ramparts of Ribeauville and Riquewihr, a few gently crumbling, others in good repair and the sepia-toned still life that was Mittelbergheim, rightfully classified among France’s most beautiful villages. All along, crowded shops briskly sold the bright, hand-painted Alsatian pottery, the shopkeepers conversing in…More
