Wendy's Platter…travels

October 13, 2025

Ribeauvillé, our home for the week in Alsace. There are a million more photos, but I don’t want to overload the internet! I am in love with the colors!

We (the royal “we,” by which I mean Nick) drove Tom and Tim to the train station at early to catch the 7:00 am train to Paris. Although we were sad to see them go, we were also excited about the next part of our journey. Choosing the faster autoroute (tolls were about $20) to cross the breadth of France meant that we would be missing a lot of the small towns. Given that we had an eight-hour drive, it seemed like the prudent thing to do.

It is mid-October in France, and the leaves are starting to turn into autumn colors. The day was quite foggy which reminded me of a journey that my little sisters and I had taken, crossing virtually the same route at about the same time of year in 1969.

We were returning to our language school in Besançon from visiting our parents in Paris for the weekend. The three of us, my sister Jenny at 15, sister Betsy at 14 and myself at 17 had been living in France for only a few months. While at the international language school, where the only common language among the students was the French they were learning, we had taken the train to Paris and had arranged to get a ride back to school from a Somalian student who had a car and had also gone to Paris for the weekend. We met up with him at the arranged place on the Left Bank, stuffed ourselves in his tiny Citroën 2CV (Deux Chevaux or 2 horsepower, which I think is being kind…) and drove off. It was late afternoon and we had about a five-hour drive to Besançon.

By early evening our driver wanted to stop to eat. Given that he had seemed slightly drunk when he picked us up, we thought some food for him was a good idea. In Auxerre, we stopped at a restaurant where he ate, but we stayed in the car to eat the sandwiches Mom had made for us.

When our driver came out, he was drunk. As a 17-year-old in charge of my two little sisters I recognized there was only one thing to do. I wasn’t going to let him drive, but it was his car. Fearing a cultural, misogynistic battle, I braced myself. When I asked for his keys, he didn’t argue and I started to drive. He immediately went to sleep.

The 2CV is a particularly interesting car. Think of it as a sheet metal garbage can on wheels. Economics, not safety or comfort, was the key to the design of the car. As I got used to driving, night fell and the fog came in thicker than I have ever experienced, at the time in my life or since.

Fortunately, the country roads did have a fog line, but there was no center line. I was a relatively new driver (a full year of driving in the US!) who was in a brand new country, and unfamiliar with driving rules and standards. I was determined to keep it safe. I drove at an agonizingly slow speed hoping not to go off the road. Unfortunately, there was not much traffic meaning there was nobody to follow. I got excited when I saw a headlights in my rearview mirror and I pulled to the right hoping that they would pass me, so I could follow them. But they were smarter than I was, and they stayed right behind me. It was white knuckles for three full hours. We made it safely French classes the next morning, our driver showed up to class, by then, sober.

Fast-forward 50+ years and here we are on a foggy autoroute driving across France once again. Comparatively speaking, it was a piece of cake…I had already been there and done that.

The vineyards cover almost every inch of the Alsatian countryside.

By the time we got to Alsace, the fog started to lift and we could see the vineyards that define all of Alsace. Off the autoroute we followed small roads through tiny towns each one more picturesque than the previous. Soon we were Ribeauvillé, the picture postcard of Alsace, and our home for the next week.

We found our Airbnb, we were thrilled with the location, ate some dinner, and tucked in for the night. The next morning, we went out for breakfast where I continued my search for the best croissant.

Speaking of food, we are now on the in the process of looking for the perfect tarte flambée (French) or flammekueche (Alsatian) or flammkuchen (German). Sort of an Alsatian pizza, it is a very thin flatbread, almost cracker, covered with a fromage blanc cheese or crème fraiche as a base then topped with a little more cheese, lardons (think bacon bits) and thinly sliced onions.

Whether it is tarte flambée, flammenkueche, or flammkuch, it is delicious; The menu board gives an idea of the different types. Not all are represented here as we haven’t made it through the list…but top left is gratinée, next is munster (the local favorite cheese),next to that is a close up showing how thing the crust is on a “au nature” or the basic tarte flambée which is also pictured with Nick in the bottom right hand corner. The far right on the top row is a forestière or a veggie tarte as there are no lardons or meat. It was actually my favorite. But take note: there are different beers with each of the tartes. You will have to discuss beers with him!

Nick and his wife Laurie had encountered this dish twenty-five years earlier and loved it. Determined to recreate it for Nick, I tried my best before we came. Now that I have had the “real” thing…I didn’t do too badly!

Like my obsession with croissants, Nick’s obsession is to try all the different types of tartes flambées, so it has become a part of our daily fare. It is one of the less expensive items on the menus, so that works in our favor. One tarte is plenty for both of us, assuming, of course, we have our own beers or wines.

The vineyards are turning yellow and we wonder whether they will turn red like ours in California. Stay tuned! We spent the day wandering along the route du vin, stopping at wineries and cheese factories, soaking in the sights and smells of Alsace.

Colmar has so many colors and such walkable streets.

The larger town of Colmar has a “vielle village,” the old village in the center of town. It is filled with half-timbered buildings of different colors, small cobblestoned streets and alleyways blocked to cars, making it a very pleasant place to walk around. With the chill of autumn in the air, I realized the one thing I didn’t pack (at the end of August when the weather was in the 80s) was a warm jacket. In one of the many town squares of old town, there was a single vendor with racks of warm jackets. He claimed they were from Paris (he pointed to the label which indeed said “Paris”), claimed it was “feathers” (maybe polyester feathers?), and that it was perfect for me. Indeed, it fit my needs and me. And it was a “deal”—according to the vendor. Pay no attention to the inside label “Made in China” I found later.

The restaurant had plenty of charm but the food didn’t wow me.

Dinner was at an adorable little cafe which was all in reds and polka dots. Maintaining our attempt at local foods, we chose baeckdoffe, a stew made up of pork, chicken, and beef that has been marinated in a reisling wine then covered and slow-cooked with potatoes, onions and carrots. Nick claims they added rabbit to it also as he came across lots of little bones. It was OK, but not one I will want to make when I get home.

These two women knew their craft so well, they never missed a beat and were in continual production.

The next day, Nick targeted a glass blowing workshop to visit in Kayserberg, yet another small town on the “Route du vin,” the wine route. We arrived in time to watch two women at their craft, creating, as per the season, glass pumpkins. In the twenty minutes we watched they worked at an amazing pace, both creating about three pumpkins each.

What is left of Chateau de Hohenack. The steep hike, both up and down, was worth it!

The Chateau de Hohenack promised a view of the Alsace countryside from above. We followed a tiny road up into the hills, parked in some gravel, then hiked up the mountain. It turned out to be quite steep and I missed the walking sticks I had used in New Zealand which are still there, somewhere at the bottom of the Whanganui River, or perhaps in the Tasman Sea by now. As promised, the view was beautiful, but we were puzzled why the thick walls were built and now crumbled when a canon couldn’t have made it up the mountain.

We snuck another small town in on our way back to Ribeauvillé, Enguisheim. Twists and turns, cobbled streets, tiny shops, open air cafés, happy families. So many colors, and window boxes with geraniums. Just lovely.

Our clandestine picnic spot at the foot of the walled city of Kientzheim.

Realizing we hadn’t eaten since our daily tarte flambée, we chose yet another small town for a late afternoon picnic. In the shadow of the great stone wall protecting the small town Kientzheim, we had a clandestine picnic. We considered it clandestine because there were small houses backed up to the wall and it looked like we were picnicking in the gardens. We sat in the chairs, opened our wine, and munched on the day’s cheese finds. The name of the town was so close to Kienitz that we were certain our Kienitz family must have been originally from here and Ellis Island officials had misspelled or respelled the name. There is absolutely no evidence to that statement. Just my mind spinning around the name and thinking of Eliza, Tristan, and Kelsey.

Tomorrow is Strasbourg, famous as the Venice of Alsace and for its magnificent cathedral, the highest man-made structure in Europe for more than two hundred of years until the Eiffel was built in 1887.

©2025 Wendy Platt Hill

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