After a three night stay, we felt that this Relais et Chateaux property is best suited to a one night visit that includes dinner at their Michelin-ranked restaurant, Le Prieure. Although the hotel is charming, its surroundings are not. Anonymous apartment buildings share its tree-lined street and the historic center, on whose edge the Abbaye rests, cannot compete with the storybook quaintness of Colmar or Riquewir. The roads around Selestat are lined with auto shops, office buildings and other workaday structures and the few historic buildings in the core are only mildly interesting. For history buffs, there is the attraction of the city’s incredible humanist library.

Our room, Number 102, overlooked the rear service drive and courtyard and had a very large living area and a raised floor alcove with king-sized bed. The suite’s only toilet was in a closet next to the alcove and featured an old, outswinging door that wanted to pop open if not securely latched. An adjacent “salon” had the room’s one television, a stocked mini-fridge and a pull-out sofa bed. The bathroom with double sinks, tub and separate shower was generally well-lit, but the sink area was served by a couple of halogen lights high in the ceiling that left one’s face in deep shadow; shaving or applying makeup was a challenge. There was a magnifying mirror attached to an adjacent wall, but the internal bulb was burned out and the unit fixed too low for a taller person. There were no full-length mirrors. Although there was more than enough space to spread out, the main room had an odd assortment of furniture that left acres of open floor space. The one desk did not have a lamp and the primary illumination from the central chandelier meant that you could not help but cast a shadow onto whatever was in front of you. Reading a book or map was not easy unless you were in the middle of the room. An ugly and noisy free-standing air conditioning unit whose exhaust hose was fed out of an open window supplied generous amounts of cool air. Note that the attached picture makes the room look more polished than it felt.

At this point in our trip, we had hoped to send out some laundry. The Abbaye, catering primarily to one-night gourmets, did not provide standard hotel laundry service. Indeed, the front desk seemed hesitant to promise the return of our clothes within the 2 days before we left. “I hope,” was the tentative response. We had to provide our own laundry sack and crossed our fingers. The clothes were returned at the end of the second day.

The atmosphere here is decidedly formal, especially in the evening when the staff, dressed in dinner jackets, waited en masse for the arrival of that night’s diners. Service is equally formal in the small L’Apfelsteubel room which looks out onto the front garden. There was a reserved hush throughout each meal relieved only slightly by piped-in classical music.

The Abbaye offers marvelous food, a centrally convenient location and a postcard perfect timber clad, geranium covered architecture in which to sleep. However, we felt that for a longer stay in Alsace it would be preferable to find lodgings in one of the truly quaint villages where, after 6pm, the tour buses have left and the region’s famous fairytale qualities can be experienced in tranquil solitude.