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HOTEL LA COUR DU ROY - SAINT-LOUIS ALSACE
Cozy Old World Elegance at the “three borders” of Europe

The Hotellerie La Cour du Roy (Heart of the King Hotel), with its elegant half-wood and roughcast stone neo-Renaissance Alsacian façade stands at a corner in the old town center of Saint-Louis, France (not to be confused with the American city with the arch). The distinction of Saint Louis is that it is the closest town to the Basel-Mulhouse EuroAirport in the lower end of the Alsace region that borders Germany and Switzerland across the Rhine River. The Hotel La Cour du Roy, named for the Gambrinus King who supposedly invented the beer making process, has only been a hotel since 2002, with 30 rooms converted and updated from the former garages and businesses that had inhabited the spot since being bought from the brewery in the 1920’s. The hotel is 3 stars but with a mid-level luxury comfort feeling at a quite reasonable price for a romantic stay or air travel stop-over. The room designs retain the unique original half-timber and plaster walls from the turn of the last century in a quiet and comfortable atmosphere, with open beams in the common areas and the upstairs bar. The hotel’s restaurant offers regional Alsace cuisine and protected outdoors tables in the courtyard where beer wagons once unloaded their barreled cargo. A stroll along the main street of Saint Louis the Avenue Bâle finds "winestub" restaurants with sidewalk tables popular with locals where Alsacian wine (oh, that the sweet Gurwurzterminer) and French and German beers can be sampled along with the traditional Alsace dish of "Tarte Flambée", rather like a crisp pizza with onion slivers and bacon under a thick cheese-like cream. Movie theaters and shopping mall areas are also nearby.

Saint-Louis is not really itself a tourist town, the third largest city in the Haut-Rhin region in the area known as Pays des Trois Frontières (Land of the Three Borders), but it is centrally located for wandering around three countries within half an hour. Originally founded by King Louis XIV in 1684, the town became important as a customs stop on the road between Switzerland and France and was the first Alsacian town liberated from the Germans in WWII. The area between Saint-Louis and Basel along the Rhine is rather industrial with tank farms and shipping ports, and St. Louis is the home of the Franco-German Institute for Research (figuring out the next generation of super secret Euro aircraft aerodynamics and laser ballistics).

The EuroAirport sometimes referred to as the Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg Airport serves several European discount airlines like Easyjet and AirBerlin for hoping around Europe. The airport is actually about 20 minutes from either Mulhouse in France and Basel (Bale) Switzerland and 30 minutes from Lorrach, Germany. The EuroAirport is the closest gateway European Airport to Alsace in France, Germany’s Black Forest and western Switzerland (arrivals and departures at EuroAirport sometimes refer to a France side and a Swiss side, but they are actually the same terminal, just different gates for Common (shengen) Europe and Swiss passport control).

The Hotel Cour du Roy is a 10 minute taxi ride from the airport, a bus from Basel (15 minutes) also runs past to the airport. Activities and sights within the area include the Rail and Auto Museums in Mulhouse (see French National Rail and Auto Museums in Alsace), boat tours on the Rhine of Basel and it’s many museums. The Alsace Route des Van (see Wine Route Alsace), the “Monkey Mountain” Nature Park and Castle Haut-Konigsbourg in Kintsheim (see King’s Fairy Tale Castle), the ruins of Castle Rotteln near Lorrach, and balloon flights over Alsace at Wintzfelden.

Other hotels nearby convenient for the EuroAirport are the Ibis St Louis Centre and a Formule1 Motel just outside the Airport gate for a quick motorist overnight. © Bargain Travel Europe 

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MOLSHEIM AND MUTZIG

BLACK FOREST
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