Alsace is known for its storks. I remember grabbing my camera the first time I saw a real live one. I think I might have even recorded the click-clackety-clack wooden clomping of its long bill - so taken was I with it.

Seen from ground level, it sat like a messy blob on top of the slate roof, but when zoomed in, my picture showed a huge white bird perched precariously on its unmade bed of sticks, bits of nest dangling untidily around it. These comical birds really do stand on one leg and also fly in an unwieldy pelican-like way. They are so common that by the time I had spent a few days in Alsace, I merely nodded when I heard them and hardly looked up.

The lovingly preserved city of Colmar typifies Alsace's attraction. To mention it without using the word picturesque is impossible. I was just grateful we had cameras. Gordon was delirious, naturally, and even I was unable to resist snapping those meandering canals reflecting ancient half-timbered pastel-painted buildings, the Cathedral with its tiled towers, the umbrella-ed outdoor cafes, the winstubs, or wine bars, and the bustling outdoor market.

One morning we strolled along the quai de la Poissonerie, a walkway beside the canal in the appropriately-named Petite Venise (Little Venice) area. On that picture-perfect day, the reflections were superb. Our lunch spot, Winstub Brenner, sat overlooking the water and our group was inside at the large round table in the corner called 'au petit stammtisch'. This was the table, the staff told us, where people dining alone were usually seated, so they could eat together and talk to others.

It's too clichéd to talk about the picture-postcard views, yet it's hard to describe Alsace otherwise. The meticulously carved and painted ornamentation on the houses, those bright colours of window boxes dripping geraniums, medieval half-timbered houses twisting under the weight of centuries. It's almost impossible not to slip into some sort of stereotype.

I remember one town in particular, and a visit to Christine Ferber, a confiturier (jam-maker) extraordinaire in Niedermorschwihr, a tongue-twistingly named village that could have been lifted straight out of the Brothers Grimm. Christine is known throughout France, yet makes all her jams in smallish copper pans in a spotless kitchen, and sells some out front in her gingham-pretty shop, Au Relais des Trois Epis.

The snapshots I took on our trip to Alsace are a grab-bag of the stuff of tourist brochures. Ribeauville, for instance, with storks perched high on its towers, has won many European Flowered City prizes, and I could see why. It is bordering on becoming just a wee bit twee, and about as choked with souvenir places as Rocamador or Mont St Michel. Nevertheless there was still a hot-holiday relaxed feel about it too, even though almost everyone we passed seemed to be a tourist.

At Turkheim, I took a picture of an ancient sundial over a gate; at Ammerschwihr, a fat tower and a stork sign above the street; a pink hotel at the Katzenthal turn; and Kaysersberg, Albert Schweitzer's birthplace, which is touristy and perhaps now better known as yet another winner of European flowered city prizes.

Above Katzenthal itself there was a castle overlooking the town, the slopes below it filled with vines, and then later at a winery we met that year's wine-queen, a student who travelled, when her studies permitted, to promote Alsatian wine.

Alsatian food is hearty (think pig's trotters and potatoes, sauerkraut and dumplings) even in summer, and lunching one day at a taverne in Ingersheim, it was so very hot we merely played with our food, instead drinking bottle after bottle of mineral water, Wattwiller from the nearby Vosges mountains.

Alsace has an important wine industry, too, and vineyards form a rippled patchwork coat on almost every hillside. There's a route de vins as there is in other wine regions and the light white wine produced here is a perfect foil to the ubiquitous rich Alsatian pork-and-potato based dishes. It always seems somehow appropriate to me, too, that this region is almost sausage shaped.

Another day we arrived at Colmar's outdoor market just as the stall-holders were setting up, selling a wide range of tableware, clothes, bags, and food - and more food. Stalls had been set up to offer cheeses and fruit, hams and sausages, kugelhupf, a rich cake, several varieties of chevre, spices and farm cheeses, honey, eggs, jams, and griottes which are the sour cherries meant for jam-making. It was inevitable that I smelt the Munster stand before I saw it!

Alsace itself is a bit like that market. Varietu, sensual and  irresistible. No wonder storks, always connected with birth and delivery, are this region's symbol. Alsace certainly delivered us with a mixed bag of delights.