Down to Colmar

Today we made a day-trip down to Colmar, which is a smaller version of Strasbourg, with an old town and Little Venice. It's about an hour's drive south by car.

You can see my favourite Colmar photos on Flickr here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646118297375/

I'd found us a free parking space, where we could park for free for three hours with one of those blue 'discs' that Europe has, where you put the time you arrived on it and then you know how long you can park until.

I didn't really have any plan in mind for Colmar. I wanted to visit Petite Venice but I didn't really 'want' to see anything else. The very centre of Colmar was very tourist-oriented - there were people waving petitions for the blind and deaf, a petite train and tourists everywhere. We immediately tried to find some space - it wasn't too difficult, because the main drag in Colmar is a fair bit wider than some of the other tourist places I've been, like Venice and Strasbourg for instance.

We ended up at this really nice square, which is bordered by a church of sorts. There were flowerbeds and typical old French buildings all around it:

Square in Colmar

After some more wandering we found our way to Petite Venice. It's a smaller version of what you see in Strasbourg, with narrower canals and narrower walkways. Still very pretty though:

Petite Venice

With not much left to see we wandered back to the car again. I got us some meringues on the way, they seem to be a thing in Alsace. Blueberry, lemon and this weird local flavour were the orders of the day.

Some of the other photos from Colmar

We returned the long way, going over the Rhine. We stopped to watch a container ship go from the lower level to the upper level of a lock. It was amazingly fast, given that it had to travel up such a distance. Here the bridge of the ship even automatically lowers down so it can fit under the gap:

A ship in one of the Rhine's many locks

We got back in the car and journeyed back to Strasbourg just in time - a thunderstorm started to roll in. By the time we got back to Strasbourg it was dry though. Tomorrow we'll head to Illange, which will be our base for two days while we explore Luxembourg. Until then!

...And again!

Great news on both fronts today! The weather was clearer and the markets were gone. High time to go back into Strasbourg's old town and Petite France.

Day 2 of Strasbourg has now been added to the Flickr set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646084701283/

Today's plan was to do a bit more walking than yesterday. We also wanted to go to the Orangerie, which is a garden and park to the north of the centre of town.

We started off with much the same route as yesterday, taking similar photos (but not exactly the same) with a blue sky as the backdrop. The photos turned out much nicer today than yesterday, in my personal opinion:

Old-town Strasbourg in the sunshine

After originally thinking we might get the tram to the Orangerie, we decided to walk it instead, going down a couple of nice-looking streets in the process. The Orangerie turned out to be the park that all the locals go to to enjoy themselves, relax, or even go for a kayak on the lake:

Best from the Orangerie

Dad convinced me afterwards that we should walk back to the apartment, rather than getting the tram back instead. It was going to be a fairly long haul, past what I thought would be mostly the bland part of Strasbourg. That was mostly true, but it was late afternoon by this stage, the whole area looked pretty nice:

The walk back to the apartment

We went via the train station, which is famous for its bubble around the front. It was pretty nice on the outside, but as we were about to leave some seriously mean French army officers walked past carrying automatic weapons:

Offend them if you dare

We had decided that we would eat out tonight. I'd found a couple of local specialties, and a couple of decent restaurants. The first one we went to was closed for a 'summer holiday' of sorts, so we backtracked to a smaller one that looked like one the locals went to. The two dishes we had were 'Flammkuchen', a flat, onion-cream based pizza, and 'choucroute', a combination of local meats and sauerkraut. Hey TM, now we have something to call our Monday lunch!

Tomorrow we'll be heading to Colmar hopefully, which will be the last of our three days in Strasbourg. See you tomorrow!

La Petite France

With not much of a plan in place to visit Strasbourg, we decided to head into the La Petite France area of Strasbourg. Strasbourg's old town is centred around a rather large island, and Petite France is in the southwest corner.

Strasbourg for Day 1 on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646084701283/

Unfortunately today we ran into a one-off market and a bit of rain. We used the opportunity before it started raining to do a bit of sightseeing, before we headed into Notre Dame as it started raining. It was totally packed with people, and there was a hilarious warning in four languages about keeping quiet, before it went "SSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!". Cue instant pin drop. Unfortunately they didn't play it again so no video of it.

Hopefully we'll come back to Petite France again tomorrow when the weather is supposed to be a bit better, and there's no market on to spoil all the views. For now, here's my best photos for today:

Photos of the day

Until tomorrow!