We spent a long weekend in Lille, and to no one’s surprise, it wasn’t enough time to really get to know this vibrant city. But we did walk a lot, visit the basilica, and take the city bus tour, which was quite good.
We also visited the marché populaire and sat at a café drinking beer and eating frites in la Grande Place writing postcards of, justement, la Grande Place. We’re such tourists sometimes. 🙂
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Heading north from champagne country, we visited the tiny town of Parfondeval. It’s officially a Most Beautiful Village, but it’s very tiny and there’s no welcome center with tourist info, so we were somewhat underwhelmed. We drove a bit further into the countryside and bought some apple juice and cider before moving on.
In Fourmies, officially a Most Beautiful Detour, we had a picnic at the lake. We would have rented a paddleboat but the rental company was closed.
Another Most Beautiful Detour, St-Amand-les-Eaux was really lovely, but both of the churches were under renovation and therefore closed, so we soon continued on our way.
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Upon leaving Metz, we decided that, instead of going southwest toward our next stop, we would go north, and even back east a bit, to visit the recently restored Château de Malbrouck. I particularly enjoyed the workshops and explanations of how the restoration was done, and as an added bonus, throughout the château and grounds were works by the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (no photos allowed).
We also, stupidly, decided to continue west along the border and then zip up north to the border town of Givet. It was very cute and I’d love to spend a few days there; unfortunately, we still had several hours to drive to our lodging for the night, in Épernay. So we spent most of the day driving and arrived exhausted and cranky.
But we were able to recover the next day, which was pretty much bliss: we had a picnic in Epernay and then did a terrific champagne dégustation during which we shared most of a bottle with the propriétaire while trading travel stories for an hour. We would have stayed longer, but we had to run because we’d reserved places on the canal cruise. That was lovely, and then we spent the evening chatting with 2 Swedish couples in our chambre d’hôtes.
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The weather was pretty lousy during our last few days in Niederbronn, which was just as well as we needed to pack and clean the apartment before heading out.
Our next destination was the region of Lorraine, which has two important cities: Nancy, which we’d never visited before, and Metz, which we had. We spent two nights in each – not nearly enough.
The heart of Nancy is the beautiful gold-and-black trimmed Place Stanislas, named for Stanislaw Leszczynski, the deposed Polish king who became Duke of Lorraine and created this royal square. Other points of interest are the Saint-Epvre Basilica, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l’Annonciation, numerous gardens, and various museums.
We also visited nearby Toul and tasted the famous Gris de Toul, a type of rosé wine found only in this area. We were very surprised at how much weaker Lorraine wine is than its neighboring Alsace’s – the food in the two regions is very similar, but the wine couldn’t be more different.
Metz has a reputation as a dirty, industrial city, but in fact it is very beautiful and full of flowers, and the cathedral is stunning. We’d already gotten a good taste of Metz during our visit in 2008; we went this time solely to visit the brand-new Pompidou museum (Centre Pompidou-Metz), which I’d been dying to see since I first read about the construction plans about 7 years ago. I wasn’t disappointed – it’s an amazing building.
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On Tuesday, 20 July, we visited the first corner of the Hexagon. We first drove to the lovely town of Wissembourg. The church has a beautiful though unfinished cloister, and just in front is a lovely, flowery park. We continued on to Cleebourg, where we bought a bottle of crémant with which to toast our visit to the first corner. It was a gorgeous day, and when we got to the corner we were stunned to see a local fisherman sitting right there, who spoke neither French nor English. Since we couldn’t explain why we were at that exact spot, I’m sure he though we were completely insane with our crémant and camera.
Here’s our map up until we reached the first corner. Pink indicates our route as well as towns we actually walked around and/or ate in. Blue highlights where we stayed. You can click the map to see a much bigger version, but I recommend either high-speed internet or patience, as it is 2.5 MB.
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While in Strasbourg for Bastille Day, we also visited the terrific Musée alsacien and had dinner at our favorite restaurant in Strasbourg: Poêles de Carottes. One of the employees (owners?) can be a little grouchy, but the food is terrific.
On the 15th we headed south from Strasbourg to retrieve the wallet in Annecy – more than 4 hours each way. To make the most of the trip, we rented another paddleboat and spent two glorious hours out on Lake Annecy. We also found a terrific fromager and stocked up on our favorite cheeses plus some local specialities.
Coming home, we stopped in Ribeauvillé in hopes of buying more of the wine we’d liked best during our dégustations the week before, but we were 45 minutes too late – everything had closed at 7pm.
Niederbronn’s weekly marché, held every Friday, was a little disappointing, as it is mostly clothing, with only a few food stands. (The one in the nearby town of Reichshoffen, on Thursdays, is much bigger and better.)
On Sunday, we went to la Fête de la myrtille in Dambach, bought a bunch of blueberries, and tasted blueberry wine, beer, and jam.
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