France, Switzerland & Germany in 4 Days
This weekend was a little country getaway, a little road trip that covered three different countries…in three days. France, Switzerland, and Germany. Now as much as traveling by plane and train is efficient and hassle free, doing a road trip (as my family well knows) gives you a completely different sense of traveling. There’s nothing like having a map in hand, no specific plans, and a road ahead to just discover and improvise as you go.
So, here’s what my adventures entailed.
Day 1: on Thursday I took a train to the meeting location in Metz, the train was a short 1 hour train to the station Metz centre. From there the driving began to the first city…Strasbourg, France. Strasbourg was about two hours from Metz, arriving there around 10 only complicated the dinner issue of places still serving food. We walked around town, which was so calm we felt like the only people in the city…quite the difference compared to a night in Paris.
Eventually after wandering through the small roads of the town we found a quaint restaurant that was still open. I ordered some sort of pasta/lasagna called “parmigiana di melanzane” I remember this because we practically had to google the whole menu. My dish was actually peculiar and surprisingly good. It was some sort of lasagna with layers of pasta, cheese and eggplant…strange but good and fitting for the cold night and the ambiance of the place. After finishing our bottle of wine, a “tarte tatin” (French apple pie), and being the last table at the restaurant we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.
Day 2: Friday the adventures began, keep in mind that this was a road trip and the people who weren’t driving were practically unaware of the destinations we were visiting. It was all as we go for us and improvising at its finest. So that morning we found a cute cafe that specialized in hot chocolate and sat to have a small breakfast that consisted of a board of food with bits of everything: pancakes, yogurt, an egg, some bread, cookie, soup…etc. Later we explored a bit of the city we had only seen at night, we went to the Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg which is probably one of the most grand that I have ever been to. You look at it from the front and it’s tower stretches to heights that seemed to be a tad difficult to catch in photos. The inside seems like the place where royals get married, it’s immense, full of space, it’s ceilings and the detailed features throughout the cathedral leave you in awe. Truly another example of how there’s nothing like the European Cathedrals.
From there you can take a short walk to the river and see what’s known as “La Petite France,” it looks just like snow white’s village presented in real life. There’s small houses that line both sides of the river and vary in colors while remaining true to the same style of architecture. After Strasbourg it was back to the car and off to the next destination.
Little did I know the road ahead would be full of vineyards and landscapes to swoon over. To begin the weekend had the ideal weather, all week Paris had been cold and cloudy, and you get to the Alsace region and it’s clear skies, sun’s out and a comfortable 18º degrees. “La Route du Vin” was what the signs read as we began driving down a road that had vineyards left and right. The colors of these were on point, with a glowing fall yellow illuminating the fields.
Far into the mountains you could see the green trees that the autumn has kept, and on the top you can spot some towers that belong to ancient castles…yea castles. After every few miles you would see a town, with its cathedral being the most recognizable feature. All together you felt like you were in a movie, it all pieced together so perfectly that it made you wonder if it was even real.From there the improvising came into play and we took a detour into the “Forest of Barr” (Barr being the town we were in at the time). With the roof down, the crisp air blowing our hair and the trees that stood over us with their changing colors as we passed by, there was nothing but a sense of peace and wow, this is nature for you…the “little things” as we like to say.
From there it was back down to the route until we stopped at this quaint looking place to do some wine tasting. Now, if you are a red wine enthusiast…Alsace might not be the best region for you. Alsace is known for their whites and in my humble opinion they are pretty good at it. We tried about 5 or 6 different wines…Pinot Blanc, Muscat, Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, etc. My personal favorite was the Muscat because it was the most unique taste I had tried and it had a subtle sweet touch. We bought some bottles and to the road again. We kept passing by small towns to see the whole experience of the route.
Among them was Obernai and Itterswiller which we just saw from the car, both also had their cute touch of small towns full colors and wine tasting houses.The last town stop was in Colmar, which is bigger than most of the towns on the route. It was just like Strasbourg, in the sense of the colorful houses along the river. We had a late lunch there and au revoir route du vin, we headed to the next hotel.
Day 3: We got to start off by rushing to make it to the hotel’s breakfast…call me a sleeper but ending a breakfast service at 10am is just outrageous haha. With food in our systems we packed our bags and hit the road to Mulhouse. All we knew about Mulhouse (other than it being a nice town) was that it had a “Cite d’Automobile.” Basically a huge collection of antique cars in a museum, I must say it was a pretty impressive…I kept thinking my brother would be in wonderland if he had been there.
That practically wrapped up Mulhouse and off we went to Switzerland–Basel, Switzerland to be exact.
You could definitely notice the difference between the small towns and this quite bigger town. Basel was interesting, parts of it were charming and nice to walk around, while others made you wonder if you were perhaps…lost. We walked around, crossed the bridge full of tourists that overlooks the Cathedral we later visited and walked through the shopping streets and town center.
Eventually hunger took over and we sat down for some Spanish tapas, and finished at the famous Cafe Confiserie Schiesser to have dessert and coffee…nothing like some Swiss chocolate. From that point on the evening was just relaxing up until our dinner reservation at a fondue place. My mouth was watering from the moment they said fondue, I was definitely looking forward to that. So we went back to the hotel, touched up and changed and to dinner we went.
Once at the restaurant we ordered—of course some fondue—some wine and a salad, and delicious was all you could hear me say. I was loving it…fondue…at a swiss restaurant…priceless. Though for dessert we went a little less typical to some sort of sorbet that had liqueur and apple sorbet, pretty good and refreshing to digest the exquisite and plentiful amount of cheese and bread we had just had. After dinner the night continued at a local Jazz bar we had heard about. We got there, ordered some drinks, and enjoyed the tunes of the night.
Day 4: Sunday began with a slow start, everyone starts Sundays with a lazy factor…specially here in Europe where the cities are closed and empty on Sunday. We took our time to get ready and walked out to find a place for breakfast, we were determined to find some place with eggs, and coffee, some orange juice…in general a real breakfast…we found it haha and with that we put a check on Switzerland. The last stop was one of the longer road trips, two hours to the next destination Baden-Baden, Germany. I got quite excited because I had never been to Germany.
Again the road trip there was entertaining as we passed the scenery of all the fall trees that stretched over fields. Finally we arrived in the city around the middle of the day, and straight off the bat we were loving the place. It was calmer than Basel, but at the same time full of life. It had cute cafes and shops everywhere you looked, the buildings had a New Orleans look and all around there was mountains that made the place feel private.
You can definitely tell it is a place in Europe with a lot of money, the people walking around and the lifestyle they carry is more exclusive than most places in Europe. Overall we enjoyed our sightseeing, eating some food in a terrace restaurant, having some coffee and dessert while people watching by the cathedral and just enjoying the last minutes of that little vacation we had.
In the end, nothing compares to having that map in hand and the road ahead to travel at your leisure, I was happy that I got to relax and have a different kind of trip, and to me it was all just full of scenic treasures and charming towns.
Till next time then,
