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| “Sushi” Part owner, Les des Clefs, Turckheim |
Dogs are accepted everywhere in France. Except for one restaurant we saw with a “no dogs” sign, dining out with the pup is the go. For an extra ten euro, you can have your dog in the hotel as well (it’s often for free). What the French take as a dog however is more like a guinea pig – so perhaps that’s why. Some are medium sized. This is Sushi (above) one of two K9 family members at Les Deux Clefs from where we parted, sadly, this morning. Sushi is very fat. Her mum and dad lift her around to different places during the day; sunny spot here, comfort stop there etc. She has just sufficient leg strength to prop up her rotund little body when nature calls. Then she gets carted off again to a cushion or a nice comfy section of rug by the door.
French dogs all seem well socialised and very well behaved, particularly in restaurants where they just sit quietly by their families – but not always. In one restaurant this mangy looking bitser, an account equally suited to describing her owners, rocketed around chairs and tables licking up crumbs and scraps and begging for food. She went to the maitre’d and looked up imploringly, as if to say, “look this is what I’m after”, threw-up a mucus coated fleshy bone at his feet, promptly licked it up again and sat waiting with tongue-salivating excitement for her reward. The mangy-bitsers, all three, received their bill in record time and were bid au revoir.
We cabbed it from Turckheim (about 15min) to Riquewihr at 12 after a delightful breakfast and a stroll up and down the main street of Turckheim. Have you had that “fromage blanc”, like yogurt only it’s creme cheese? Throw in nuts, fresh berries, local honey, and if you have a penchant for wearing yoga pants, acai and Goji berry powder (they actually had that – but sadly I’d left my yoga pants at home), yummy.
Speaking of super foods, and probably yoga paints, oh and breakfast, we met a couple the other day in Eguisheim, at breakfast, the husband of which was a tour de France rider. He’d came to the Vosges Mountains for some light “off-training-day” rides. They were Austrian.
Natalie, our bnb host, met us at the door of our Riquewihr apartment. Happily, it’s been renovated since it’s initial build some 500 years earlier and is very comfortable indeed – it pretty much looks like an Ikea catalogue less the the Swedish meatballs.
Main street of Riquewihr
The apartment is smack bang in the centre of this beautiful old cobbled-street-town with more rustic, Alsatian stone-and-timber houses than you could poke a round of Munster at. Some of the most famous wine names are here doing degustation lunches and wine tasting. Hugel and Fils is just across the street from us.
We planned tomorrow over suckling pig in honey and tarte l’onion with a demi (500mm carafe) of Pinot Gris. Can’t remember what we planned to do – but the wine was great.
Une demi s’ils vous plait.
