The Alsace - A Walk Through the Vineyards

On Sunday morning we got up and went for a walk through the vineyards and through several of the small towns that are nestled amongst the hills. There are all sorts of paths you can walk on and the TI gave us a good map that showed us our options. We chose a 6-mile route but you could spend all day doing a longer route with a stop for lunch. It was a gorgeous warm sunny day and I took a lot of really great pictures from the walk, too many to post here unfortunately. So here are some of the best ones. This is Riquewihr from a little ways up the hill:



Some grapes:



Frankie found a bench:



Now we're in Hunawihr, the town just north of Riquewihr:





There was a church in Hunawihr that stood on its own. We didn't go in but instead took lots of pictures of it:





Garmisch stopped to admire the view:



Hunawihr, from a little ways up the hill on our way to the next town:



Some more grapes:



We then walked through the town of Zellenberg but I didn't take any pictures of it because we were worried that the walk was taking longer than anticipated and we still had to find lunch and drive back to Zürich. Of course the walk was taking so long because Frankie and I had to stop and take a picture every 5 feet. The next few pics are taken from the top of the hill where Zellenberg sits but of course we didn't turn around to take a picture of the town:





Heading back to Riquewihr:





If you ever get to the Alsace region, I highly recommend taking this walk! We had originally planned to rent bikes and that would have been just as nice but only a few of the bigger towns have bike rentals and of course the rental places are closed on Sundays so renting bikes takes a little more planning than just setting out on foot.

Garmisch's Adventures in Wine Tasting

Turns out Garmisch is quite the wine connoisseur. And he certainly got his fill of wine tasting in the Alsace. He started off on Friday trying out a few different wines at a cafe in Riquewihr. Here he is seeking out a cafe on the main street of Riquewihr:



He had a few hours to kill before dinner so he started with a glass of Gewurztraminer which he found way too sweet. Then he tried a Pinot Blanc which was way too tart after the sweet Gewurztraminer:



The glass above is a typical Alsatian wine glass. They are tall and thin and have light green, dark green, or clear stems. And, well, they don't hold a trough of wine like most of us are used to, but they do the trick. When you're drinking cold white wines it makes sense to pour less into the glass at a time so you can drink it before it warms up too much. At least, that's how I see it.

Garmisch got serious the following day and did some real wine tasting. There are oodles of wine tasting opportunities in Riquewihr so he settled on going to whichever ones he walked by on a random route through town.





He and Frankie had a great time:



He and Larry had a great time too:





We went to three different wine tastings with Garmisch on Saturday and we ended up going home with 2 bottles of wine from each place! 3 Muscats, 2 Pinot Gris, and 1 Cremant (a sparkling white wine). Can't wait to enjoy them. The wine tastings are all free and the wines are very reasonable, about 7 Euros per bottle. And we've even found some Alsace wines at our grocery stores in Zürich so we will try those as well at some point.

The Alsace - Colmar and Riquewihr and Ribeauville

This past weekend we drove to the Alsace region of France with Martin's parents. We stopped in the town of Colmar for lunch on Friday, then headed up to Riquewihr where we spent Friday and Saturday nights, then did lunch in Ribeauville on our way back to Zürich on Sunday. These towns are all connected by the route des vins which is a small road that winds its way through about 30 towns and all the vineyards in the Alsace region. Lots of scenic views along the route des vins and multiple wine tasting places in every town. It would probably take you a solid month to taste all the wines that are grown in this region, and that's if you really dedicated yourself to tasting wines from multiple vintners per day. Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, and Muscat are the main grapes grown in the Alsace. All the wines are white and many of them are very sweet. We found that we really enjoyed the Muscat wines which have a wonderful bouquet and a full flavor but are not too sweet (Muscat wines from warmer climates are sweet, however, so only Muscat wines from the Alsace are not sweet). I didn't like any Gewurtztraminer wines they were all too sweet for me but I found a Riesling that was not sweet at all which I enjoyed.

The towns in the Alsace are absolutely adorable and every building is decorated with abundant flowers. We spent a lot of time just wandering down the streets taking pictures of every house and building. In Colmar, some of the buildings dated back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Many of them had issues standing up straight or maintaining square structures due to sagging and bending through the years. Here are some pics (it was cloudy and rainy on Friday so the light was not that great);











There was also a big church (actually two of them I think) that were both kind of orangey:





I found Riquewihr to be cuter than Colmar. Riquewihr is only about one street big whereas Colmar is much larger, and Riquewihr has a wall around it which just automatically makes it smaller and more interesting. Here's the little alley our hotel was on (note the vineyards in the background):



Here's the main street:





One of the entrances to the town and the wall:



Here's Martin telling me to grow balls of hedge on our balcony:





The cute alley our hotel was in, at night:



And the specialty of the Alsace region, macaroons! In many flavors including raspberry, pistachio, orange, banana, and chocolate. Martin and I got one of each and tried them all. I wasn't a fan of the orange one but enjoyed all the rest. All still warm from the oven too, of course.





The official bird of the Alsace (so it seems) is the stork. Many buildings have stork nests on top of them, and they put up special circular metal structures on the tops of the houses to make it easier for the storks to nest there. We stopped in Ribeauville for lunch on Sunday and saw these storks:





You can buy stork stuffed animals in every shape and size in almost every store in the Alsace but we held ourselves back from buying any. Here is the main street of Ribeauville (I think I even managed to get a castle in the background of this picture):

A Boat Ride on Lake Zürich

This past Sunday we woke up to a gorgeous sunny day and Martin turns to me and says, hey, let's go on a boat ride to which I respond, well, I have a lot of things I wanted to get done today but sure, why not. So we went for a 4-hour round-trip boat ride on Lake Zürich. You ride on a big ferry boat and it takes 1:45 to get from Zürich at the top of the lake to Rapperswil at the bottom of the lake.

Some pictures from the boat on the way to Rapperswil:







We saw another boat like ours, except this one had a paddlewheel:



Lots of sailboats down near Rapperswil, might have been a little race because it looked like they were going in one big circle:



And here is Rapperswil:



There isn't much to Rapperswil - some shopping (not on Sunday though so nothing was open when we were there), the lake, a nice rose garden, and a little castle and church. It's perfect to go there for lunch and spend an hour wandering around and enjoying the old town and views of the lake. We ate lunch at an outdoor cafe in the main square here, then walked up the stairs you see in the back where there's a path you can walk along and get a great view:





The rose garden:





Super cute lakefront:



Our boat coming to take us home: