travels and home: June 5: Lorraine to Alsace and the Michelin Guide Vert

More specifically, Nancy to Riquewihr. Sophistication to twee. Puff pastry to kugelhopf. Cafe to Vinstub. Farm country to vineyards. Rolling valleys to Vosges mountains. Enlightenment to the middle ages. We did not travel so far, but the change from Nancy to the Alsatian wine country was considerable.

As usual, we plotted our route via the Michelin Green Guide, planning several stops according to star ratings. We don't always agree with Michelin writers about the relative merits of sights; theirs is a bias for a certain type of historical or artistic site. Nevertheless, one star ("interesting") gets our attention, two stars ("worth a detour"), our desire, and for three stars ("worth a journey") we'll certainly consider altering our route.

If you associate Michelin with high-end restaurant ratings, you are thinking of the traditional Red Guide, rates hotels and restaurants. If you associate Michelin with tires, you aren't wrong; the Green Guides are definitely oriented toward car travel. Some Green Guides, including Alsace Lorraine Champagne, include significantly useful recommendations for lodging and food. They all include useful sections on history and architectural terms. Some of the site descriptions are so useful as to qualify as guides to specific museums, churches, and the like. But mainly, they are wonderful for mapping out trips: designing circuits, choosing areas of a region to visit, and the like.

Our first stop was

St Nicolas de Port, just east of

Nancy. The town was quiet, and after Nancy, looked a bit depressed economically.There were families with large packages of toilet paper and cereal and other staples, as if they had gotten them from a social service place. The

basilica was especially crowded in by other buildings, hard to get a look at, but it had some terrific gargoyles (using the term loosely).

Our next stop was Baccarat, of crystal glass fame. The town straddles a pretty river. On the far side was a modern chapel - the only one we saw all trip. Inside it was barely lit, but was filled with jewel-like Baccarat glass windows. In front of the church was a memorial to the Resistance.

Across a small bridge was the small Baccarat museum, one end of rectangle of low buildings that were old glassworks. On the main street were, of course, many shops selling crystal. We associate the name with cut glass stemware, but in face, that is only one kind of work produced there. (The origin of the name baccarat for the game that is played at high-end casinos of the type James Bond frequents is different, but I'm sure it hasn't hurt to have it associated with the prestigious Baccarat crystal.) We thought the town was worth at least a star, but Michelin didn't give it one.

(These glasses are labeled as being: service of Agha Khan Pakistan 1927; service of Pope Benedict 2009; water goblet Marshal Joffre 1920; service for Saudi Arabia; service for the Sultan of Surakarta)

For lunch we stopped at

Ste Die des Vosges, a rather flat, business-like town from what we could see, not so old or lovely or vosgesque, although it has some

churches that we didn't see (the town has also been destroyed by fire a few times over, including near the end of WWII). Michelin's restaurant tip was a place with a glass-enclosed porch and a "view of the extraordinary Tour de la Liberté." We didn't think the tower was extraordinary, and the restaurant looked stuffy.

Instead we ate Au Petit Gourmet, which had a terrific fixed menu including a plate of wonderful potato pancakes, smoked pork, and sausage - en effet, our first taste of Alsatian-style food, although we were still in Lorraine.

The proprietor was friendly, too. Then we aimed our Citroen toward the mountains.

After a brief pit stop in Ste Marie aux Mines, a pretty mountain town, right near the pass, we were in the mountains. Michelin recommended a hike on a mountain called

Le Brezouard. There were racing cyclists everywhere, and once off the main road, walkers as well. Despite maps and color coded signs, we probably didn't take exactly the hike we meant. We went steeply up through a mostly evergreen forest, reached a pleasant but unspectacular view, and descended. Still, a good break.

We were heading for

Kayserberg, which sounded like a good place to stay. We were bowled over - appalled, really - by the utter theme-park cuteness of the place. It didn't help that it was congested with tourists. We checked out one hotel, looked for Michelin's hot tip of a great homey restaurant which had become a pizza parlor, and got out of Dodge.

By now a bit travel weary, we continued to the walled town of

Riquewihr, an even cuter town, also full of tourists, but on a hill, which made it nicer, and surrounded by vineyards. where we couldn't get a room at the higher-end Michelin pick, and couldn't find the inexpensive guest house, but got a small room in Hotel St Nicholas.

I'm skipping dinner now - it gets its own blog entry.

The next morning we followed the tourist office's mapped walking tour. It so was quiet in the morning, and the town was so photogenic, that we finally decided it was quite nice.

(included in the photos: over a doorway of a bourgeois home: the owner and death, with an inscription in German; "well of the Jews" on "Jew street"; 400-yr-old map of the town; old gate at the upper end of the city; view of vineyards that rise up past a rooftop; carving of a tradesman from the corner of an oriel (oriel: a type of bay window) of his building; a typical cute painted metal sign (the six-pointed star probably has nothing to do with a Jewish star), either by or in the style of the early-20th-century Alsatian artist-caricaturist Hansi. Click on any for larger image, or look at our full photo albums.)