We Visited Europe’s Most Fairytale Like Villages

We've just arrived in Colmar in the Alsace region, a place that is known as one of the most beautiful towns in France. And that's what welcomes you to Colmar. This region is like stepping into a storybook with adorable villages overflowing with flowers and charms. It couldn't be more Disney and more real at the same time. So we're going to spend a couple of days here and we'll also visit the nearby village of Rigueville and try some of the local dishes. Look at this place. We'll also visit the Château du Haut-Cunisbourg, a medieval castle perched on top of the mountain with what we were told are breathtaking views of the region. But here's the thing. Are these villages too perfect? Are they just tourist traps? Or is there some real magic hidden beneath the surface? Let's find out. For this trip we decided to drive to Colmar from Paris. Colleen wants to do some shopping and I may want to bring a bottle or two of that legendary Riesling. So having trunk space will be handy. The weather forecast is not promising though. We have rain, rain and more rain ahead of us. Yeah so sometimes we go on video shoots in towns and it's beautiful and sunny and everything and sometimes it's well rainy. I made us a reservation tonight in a tiny restaurant called La Soye that specializes in Tarte Flambe. I'm gonna cook with the chef. Yeah let's go excited. That's Tarte Flambe. And you know what's fun? What? The guy doesn't speak a word of English. No. No? You guys set it up that way for me? No. So we're going to cook a Tarte Flambe and we're gonna do it all in French. It's got to be even. Okay I'm working on it. Very very good. It's hard to do. I need two hands for this. Oh la la. That's the trickiest part so far. He says he doesn't speak English but then he says no easy. He says hey. It's a little. Don't burn yourself. Be careful it's very hot. That's fast food. That's amazing. Oh my goodness look at that. Look at that. Be ready to move quick DuPont. Perfecto. I am starving already. That's the garlicky one. Oh baby. So I'm having this little piece. Yes. Of Tarte Flambe or Flamécure. Flamécure. With a glass of. With a glass of. Really yummy white wine and I mean this is like tapas with flatbread and it's absolutely delicious but he told me that if I want to cook it at home my oven won't get hot enough because he used 3,000 degrees in his oven and mine doesn't go that hot so I'll just have to come back. Is it good? Of course it's good. I'm an excellent cook and he's an excellent teacher. Look at this slice. That looks very good. Yeah. Jeffrey said I could try them all. Life is good. Life is good in Alsace. Now let's do a little bit of Christmas shopping before going to bed. There are storks here and there's an adorable little stork. Where? It says parle avec moi. Ne me touche pas. But these last kids that were here were going crazy with it. I need it. Well good morning. It's time to go check out the breakfast buffet. I must say that the setting of this restaurant on the river is very charming. Watch this. We're going out there later. We're Now before we go to Riqueville which is considered one of the most beautiful villages in the world we're going to make a stop at the castle of Aucklandersburg and I hope I'm saying that right. This is absolutely amazing. You have a little path like this to get to it. Well the weather is not cooperating and we are literally in the clouds which ironically is better that way. It makes it super spooky. Now honestly it has an enchanted feeling to see it like this in the cloud and I guess we'll just have to come back another time for the view. But for now this is what we got. Now ladies and gentlemen it's the view of the vines below. Darling look more stairs. That's a kitchen. Do you want to cook here? That is big. Oh wow that's a barrel. That is a barrel. The kitchen is much smaller than the bar. I know of course it is. Now this castle is perched high into those mountains. It's on top of a mountain. You know you have the the rocks and then they build on top and it's a seriously impressive medieval castle. Imagine a real life Disney castle but with a twist. And that's where the princess is. All the way at the top of the tower. It was completely restored in the early 1900s by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The detail in the wood is just fabulous. Yeah. So you get the authentic medieval architecture with a touch of early 20th century German grandeur. Talk about time warp. This one almost looks like a giant gun. Like you can almost see the evolution of how they Yeah. These are the first cannons. Absolutely gorgeous. Definitely worth a stop. I don't know about you but it opened an appetite for for me. I'm a little hungry. You did an awful lot of exercise walking up the hill around the thing up and down. Yes and um let's go to Rig Vier. Sounds like a plan. I don't either. Now we made it to Rig Vier. This village was the inspiration for the Disney cartoon The Beauty and the Beast. It couldn't be more Disney and more real at the same time. Imagine strolling down cobblestone street lined with colorful crooked houses overflowing with flowers. That's Rig Vier. Look at that. You have yellow, orange, purple, another yellow, one blue. Oh my god. I got this pork thing with potatoes and all kinds of stuff in a stew. Yeah. The meat in this area has different kinds of spices so it's a little bit nutmeg, a little bit you know it's a softer gentler kind of a something and it's really easy to eat. I'm happy. So you take a little bit of meat, take a little bit of potatoes and then you dip it in the sauce right there which is a cream sauce and then whoa look at that. That's a bite. You got the right thing? Yeah I got the right. You got the right thing. I got the right thing. That's exactly what I wanted. Parfait. Merci. Okay so this part here is mine. This you can have that. This is yours. This. That is mine. Oh yeah. Oh boy. Oh yeah. That looks like chocolate decadent. Oh oh. Right and then what you do with your with your coffee spoon is you add a little bit of whipped cream on top of it to make it a very dainty small bite. After lunch, Colleen was super excited to visit Oregvier. That building was there before my country was even founded. That's a true story. A long time before. I could never have imagined in my lifetime I would actually be here walking in this kind of a street in this kind of a village. Hansel and Gretel may have been here. I know I said that in Strasbourg but this is something special. Right there you have the vines. You can see you have the little church here in the steeple. That's right there and then you have those uh I mean the scene right here is as if you've painted a uh a delightful little Disney village. And this is the working town and they're bringing in the grapes from the vines. And next we found a bakery with coconut macaroons in the window. They look so delicious we had to try at least one. That's a macaroon not a macaron. It's basically a little coconut thing. Oh yeah. Yeah that hits the spot right? It says nature or plain but the plain one is coconut. Well make no mistake this is a coconut macaroon. But now it's time to head back to Colmar. It has been a long day with a lot of sightseeing. So we'll just head to a local famous restaurant in Colmar to grab dinner before calling it a night. Thank you. And pepper sauce. She already stole the french fries. It's like Antoine used to say on Halloween it's the dad tax that's the wife tax. This is a giant asobuco ravioli and beautiful presentation. I think I'm going to want a bite out of this. Yes? You won't like it a bit. Yes I will. After the delicious lunch we had today. With a beautiful sauce here. Can you give me a little extra sauce? Do you see this bite? Mm-hmm. It's delicate. Yeah it's perfect. Good morning. All right so today it's all about Colmar and what this town is all about. One of the things that I love in this part of France is the woodwork and the outside terraces. Check this out. Oh wow yeah. Like the balcony style terraces. Oh wow that is stunning. And the church in the background. So first stop of the day is the Musée Bartholdy. Look at this door. This place looks serious. Ever heard of the Statue of Liberty? Well the guy who designed it Auguste Bartholdy was born in and this is his childhood home and it's now a museum. You can see some of his early work here plus models and sketches of Lady Liberty herself. He was saying that they made a lot of the little plaster pieces so that he would give each team member a piece of the plaster original. Oh very cool. So that they knew what to do. But here's the cool part. The museum also has a recreation of Bartholdy's Paris apartment so you can get a glimpse into his life and the artistic scene of the time. It's a must-see for any American history buff visiting Colmar. Best five bucks ever spent. So after driving by all these vines yesterday it's time to see what this local wine is all about. Forget your oaky chardonnays and buttery California whites. This is Riesling. This is Gewürztraminer. Musca. So this is what we're trying. We're trying some Musca from 2023. Something. It has a lot of personality. I don't know if it has more alcohol but it tastes a little bit stronger. Well it's morning too. I mean it's 11 30. It's not lunchtime yet. Yeah. I want to say something going but you're turning into a wine snob. I can't help it. And they even have Pinot Noir in Alsace. The clarity of the liquid is just a beautiful thing. It's easy. It's so easy to drink. I'm starting to think it goes with another bottle when you're done. That's the problem with this one. It's so easy to drink if you have a second one then you get up and you realize your legs are gone. The reason why you don't have I didn't know Pinot Noir from Alsace is because it's it's it's a difficult wine to grow here. It's too cold too wet and I knew that from Burgundy which is just south of here. How far is Burgundy from here? We're talking about two hours drive. Yeah it's two hours drive from here. So we're just north of the Burgundy region but that two hours change because you have the mountains. You have the climate. So that's the thing that's really interesting in France. It's a very small country. It's it's basically the size of Texas but because of the mountain range the Vosges, the Jura, the Alps, the Pyrenees and then you have valleys and you have the Conta in the middle. You have all kinds of different climates that are better for different kinds of things and we're just two hours away from from Burgundy and which is the home of Pinot Noir. So Viviot it means spicy. Okay. It's coming up in the city coming up south of Tyrol. Okay. This one is really aromatic a lychee and rose taste. Lychee and rose. This is very nice. Yeah. Very nice. We had this with the with the tart flambé and it was great and I imagine it goes with everything else. You could have that with sugar too. I definitely taste the rose. I definitely taste the lychee but it's a but it's a very soft gentle easy one to drink. I could do that with dessert too. Oh yeah. It tastes like fun. It tastes like fun. I told you. I got the fruit. It's a lot more fruity. So we're all fueled up and ready to explore Colmar. This place is gorgeous even if the weather doesn't want to cooperate. Even in the rain it's a good time. It's like a real life fairy tale exploded here. Check out these crooked houses. They're like something out of a Disney movie. And the canals. It has a little Venice vibes for sure. We'd love to take a ride on the canals but the idea of doing it in the rain doesn't sound fun for us. We'll just have to come back next spring. All right. It's time to get some lunch. We took a stroll through the town and walked through the local markets in search of a great meal and what we found was Bordeaux. Because what you do after a wine tasting is drink more wine. Now forget the choucroute and tart flambé. Bordeaux is something else. I have some chestnuts and a shrimp and some sweet potatoes. I would never imagine to put all of that together and it's so good. It's a modern and inventive cuisine with a touch of Alsace. They have flavor that explodes on the palate. What an explosion of flavor. I'm gonna try that again. And it's the kind of place that reminds you that even in tourist trap towns you can find something truly unexpected. Why go to a tourist trap restaurant when you can eat extraordinary food like this. I'm gonna try this steak and milkshake. That could like butter. Next time we're in Colmar there's no doubt that we will come back to this restaurant. Make this a pit stop in Colmar. You won't regret it. Okay art lovers get ready for some mind-blowing experience at the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar. This place is housed in a former convent which is cool in itself but wait till you see what's inside. First the Eisenheim altarpiece. From the early 1500s they did that. A massive insanely detailed masterpiece that left us speechless. Think vibrant colors, dramatic scenes and a whole lot of gold leaf. So it starts like this and we open it like that and we open this one like that and we open this one like that. So this is the statues and these are the depictions from hell and the demons because he went into solitude more than 40 days and 40 nights. Yeah. And made him a little crazy yeah because here you can see a goddess coming to to talk with him and help him get over here. Wow that's pretty exciting. Close it back again. So these are all the art pieces that we just saw. Yeah. But that's not all. There's also some awesome medieval sculptures, renaissance paintings and even modern art. Oh and the ancient wine press. It's huge and a total reminder of Colmar's winemaking history. And I can imagine they probably have a horse or a donkey that would go around didn't they or did it was that pushed by humans who knows. But it's incredible because if you think about the tree the age of that piece because to make a tree that size that's a 200 year old tree. So you're looking at timbers that are probably five six hundred years old. After a couple days in Colmar we're blown away. What a beautiful area rich in culture and tradition. The beauty of Colmar and Riquevir is undeniable like something out of a storybook. But it's more than just pretty houses and flower box. It's the food, the wine, the people. Generous, welcoming with a deep pride in their traditions. You taste it in the Tarte Flambée and the crisp bristling and there is no doubt that we'll come back and spend more time in Alsace. Now if you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe to see more content about France and Paris. Next I would watch our video on our trip to Antibes in the French Riviera and we'll see you next time.