Noël a Kaysersberg

Friday, November 30, 2007

About halfway through November, my friend made plans to take a drive up to Kaysersberg in the Alsace region of France on the first weekend of their Christmas Market, and wondered if I'd like to go. I agreed, jumping at the chance to get out and explore some more of the area. As an unexpected bonus, MrB got the day off work and was able to come along. It was rather gray and chilly, but that did not put a damper on the day, we were going exploring!

When we arrived around 10am, they had just begun setting up their booths, so we made plans to meet at lunchtime, and MrB and I headed off to look around. There was the tower from an old chateau overlooking the town we wanted to explore, but we took a nice meandering route through the old medieval town to get there.

There were Christmas decorations hung up everywhere, and a pretty little canal ran through the middle of town and under some of the buildings. It was cold enough when we got there that we started looking around for something hot to drink. There were stands selling 'vin chaud' and 'chocolate chaud,' but we ended up climbing up to the tower first, and that warmed us up quite nicely. We did stop to get some of the chocolate chaud later, but it did not live up to expectations, and was just plain old hot chocolate, nothing special.

Christmas decorations










Canal scenes




The view from the top was quite good, though the gray clouds and brown hillsides made it a bit drab. We both agreed that we'd have to try to get back in the spring when everything is in bloom. There were vineyards terracing the hills as far as the eye could see, and from our bird's eye view of the town we could see the the Christmas Market booths set up around the church. You could actually walk up to the top of the tower, and a lady who had just come down as we were starting up told us there were about 113 steps.







We met up with the other two and had a tasty lunch, then headed out of town. Since Ribeauville was on the way home, we decided to stop there as well. We pulled up to the parking area, and there were two storks grazing around a bed of pansies in the middle of the roundabout. Storks are very well received here, and there are stork nests on top of some of the houses and high points in the area towns, as well as portrayed in many of their handicrafts. Ribeauville also had some very cute little Christmas decorations, little white owl figures in a snowy scene, and a stuffed bear blowing bubbles. There was one of these in Kaysersberg as well, but this one was much cuter. I had to take a picture of the owls for my Grandma because she loves them, and has a nice collection of little owl figurines.


While we were there we decided to stop in at this little Patisserie, and had very delicious coffee and desserts. I would highly recommend giving it a try if you are in Ribeauville, the shopkeeper (and owner, I believe) was very nice, and the food was delicious.