FoodTrek: Our Journey to Northern France - Alsace that Ends Well

I shared the German half of our trip to Europe, and now I'm sharing the French-German portion that drew our adventure to a delicious close. Since we were on a tour that followed the Rhine, we visited the Alsace region of France, a beautiful area that has as much German influence as it does French, since cities and towns changed hands between the two countries over the last few hundred years. As a result, you get a distinctive combination of both cultures, delicious food and wine, and some interesting history. Shall we proceed? Allez!

Welcome to France, commence pastry gorge - Photo by Wasabi Prime

FoodTrek: Wine and Dine on the River Rhine

"So, what did you guys do on your trip to Germany?" My gut (har-har) response is, "We drank a lot of local wine and ate a lot of local food." You really do explore a region through its meals, because for places that are centuries-old like Germany, a lot of its living history is in its traditional cuisine. We weren't necessarily having nothing but bratwurst and sauerkraut for the duration of our visit, but we did try to eat and drink things that were directly related to the places we were at. If I were to sum up our visit through Germany, cruising along the Rhine, what we had on the plate and in our glass certainly added additional flavor to all the incredible sights we were treated to.

View from atop Heidelberg Castle - a true feast - Photo by Wasabi Prime

FoodTrek: Cruise Cuisine, aka, "Cruisine"

You probably already saw a bit of the whirlwind trip we took in early November over Twitter -- we literally hopped aboard a river ship and cruised our way along the Rhine River, through Germany and France. Incredible, right? We were long overdue for a big vacation, and it was a reminder of why a bit of an adventure, even an easy, well-organized one, is a good thing. It had been a stressful, hectic year, and one of the most welcome things about this trip was the fact that we were fully taken care of -- one of the big draws of cruise vacations -- and when it comes to starting a vacation off right, being able to indulge in being looked after is such a glorious thing. And this was one trip where we weren't shy about saying we liked eating on the ship -- honestly, can you beat the view??

Feeling pretty royal on our vacation along the River Rhine - Photo by Wasabi Prime