It’s not every day that I feel like I’m wandering through the Beauty and the Beast village. (Seriously, cue: Belle – Little Town.) But, lucky for me, I was able to feel that way for a couple of days during our trip. These were the days we stepped outside of the major cities and explored Strasbourg and its surrounding villages.

Le petite France

Pictures are going to speak much louder than words in this case, so I will let them tell most of the story, but first, a quick briefing. We decided to head to Strasbourg for a couple of reasons. We knew that while we were in France, we wanted to explore a smaller village. Something without the hustle bustle of a large city like Paris, and one that we could get a bit lost in. Strasbourg, the capital city of the Alsace region and the seat of the European Parliament, certainly does not sound like the itty bitty, cute little French village we had in mind. In this case, the looks spoke louder than the stats.

If I’m being completely transparent, we chose Strasbourg because of how beautiful it looked in photos. The colors of the buildings popped and there was a strong German influence to the architecture. There was a tour that offered visits to three of the adorable nearby villages we found online, so after discovering that, we booked our “village experience” in one of France’s larger cities pretty quickly. We thought we’d feel like we were experiencing an entirely different area by visiting Strasbourg, and we were right.

We also toyed with the idea of crossing the France – Germany border, just to add another country to our trip. Since we only had a couple of days here, and we’d been walking around for the past week and a half, we didn’t make it to Germany, even though our photos look as if we did. We took the first day to explore Strasbourg itself. We dined on crepes and sipped beer, not wine, at a bar on the square. The second day, we were able to walk through Colmar, Riquewihr, and Eguisheim, taste a few wines significant to the Alsace region, and explore Haut-Koenisbourg, a large hunting lodge. (Are you seeing what I mean about German influence now?)

Like I mentioned, I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking in this case. Doesn’t it look like a Disney-esque village?

Strasbourg

Strasbourg Cathedral

Art outside of the cathedral

The square

Colmar, the first village on the tour

Colmar

Eguisheim

Eguisheim

Riquewihr – my favorite of the three.

Riquewihr

Riquewihr

Bird’s eye view of Riquewihr and the Alsace vineyards

Why doesn’t my office view look like this?