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Alsace base possibilities?

Hi,

I've been working on a France itinerary for April 14-30 for a while now and gotten a lot of help:) Thanks!

We'll have a car rental for the whole trip.

This will be the final general itinerary:

4 nights Loire

4 nights Burgundy

4 nights Alsace (return car rental and take train from Strasbourg to Paris at the end)

3 nights Paris

I'm working on the Alsace lodging part now and trying to decide on a base for the 4 nights in Alsace. We'd like to taste various types of wines, eat a variety of foods, visit the different little villages/towns, and maybe visit the car museum in Mulhouse among other things possibly. We're also on a pretty tight budget.

We thought about Ribeauville because it has the wine co-op and we could just walk to it for wine tasting, but wonder if it's too small for restaurant variety?

Thought about Colmar as it's bigger and might have more variety, but maybe traffic going into/out of it might be a headache? We'll have a car rental.

Strasbourg will be too far north as a base and I saw it mentioned that if we stayed in Strasbourg, we'd need a Crit'Air sticker on the car. We don't want to fool with that if it doesn't already come on the rental--plus the traffic.

We're looking at staying in self catering places or maybe a Chambre d'hote with access to a refrigerator. Our nightly budget is around 65-110 Euros. I've found quite a few places in different towns that would meet that requirement.

Where do you think our best Alsace base might be?

Posted by
7384 posts

We stayed in Colmar for a night and Eguisheim for 3 nights. Colmar is a pretty city, but too big, I think to be considered a wine village, though there is at least one winery in town. We liked Eguisheim, seemed less busy than the other villages, we enjoyed the restaurants in town, recommend reservations. Eguisheim is not central to the other wine villages. We loved it, and also loved driving between the wine villages. We stayed at a working winery, Le Hameau d'Eguisheim, and were very pleased.

I agree that Strasbourg is too far and while a very pretty town to visit, its not an Alsace wine village.

Posted by
2390 posts

Also, parking in Strasbourg is very pricey. Better to not stay there.

Posted by
1065 posts

I spent a week in Colmar in 2022 and loved it. But, I was traveling alone and without a car.

With the luxury of a car I would definitely choose to base in one of the wine villages. Find a place that can promise you convenient parking. If you plan to have dinner out, choose a village that has several restaurants in your budget so you can walk to dinner and enjoy some wine.

If the timing works, you might want to leave the car parked one day and use the Kutzig Bus to visit a couple villages with no need for a designated driver. This year they started weekend service on April 18. I used Kutzig on 2 days of my Colmar stay to visit 2 villages each day.

One advantage of basing in Riquewihr is you could take the bus to Colmar, Ribeauville or Hunawihr and give your driver a day or two off.

If you base in Turckheim you could take the bus or train into Colmar for dinner.

Posted by
1963 posts

If you're not going to stay in Strasbourg, you should at least visit. As beautiful a city as I've ever seen. Between Strasbourg and Prague I don't know how I'd choose.