After 3 lovely days in Italy, we’re back in France. The drive yesterday (Saturday) wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The weather was cloudy and drizzly, but the ride was an easy one and the countryside was beautiful, even in with the clouds.
Here’s a short video Peter took out the front window. It wouldn’t embed so, if you want to see it, you’ll have to click the link. Don’t know why that happens but luckily it doesn’t happen to often.
There were a lot of tunnels to get through the mountains, the longest of which was over 10 miles long. It was only one lane in each direction as the northbound tunnel was shut down. So, two lanes of traffic in each direction went down to one lane to get into the tunnel. The back up on our side was only about 5 minutes long, but the one on the southbound side was about 5-6 miles long!! It was going to take them hours to get to the tunnel. Once we got in it moved at a steady pace but the merge to one lane each way was cumbersome. We felt pretty bad for those drivers knowing how long that traffic jam was.
After about 2 1/2 hours of driving we stopped for a break and petrol. We wandered around the giant rest stop for a little while looking for yummy things to eat. Here’s a sample of Swiss pastries. We bought some Swiss chocolate instead…very good.
Once back in the car, we were just over an hour away from Colmar. It’s in the Alsace region of France which has bounced between France and Germany throughout the years. The German influence is very evident in the food and the buildings. Most people here speak both languages, but not much English. We’re managing with sign language, pointing, and google translator.
You might be wondering why there is a Statue of Liberty at the entrance to the town. Well…Colmar is the home town of August Bartholdi, the Father of the Statue of Liberty. This is one of several replicas throughout Europe.
Other than the birthplace of Bartholdi, Colmar is most known for it’s well-preserved old town and the half-timbered buildings. Yesterday we took the Petite Train through the city which gave us an overview of the tourist part of town and an idea of the things we wanted to visit today. Here are the highlights of our wanderings. As you can tell, it was cloudy both days but, luckily, we didn’t have much rain.
The Unterlinden Museum used to house a 13th century convent but is now the most visited arts museum in France, outside of Paris.
We only covered one floor of the museum as the other floor had archeological artifacts and we’ve seen enough of that to last awhile. The salons we saw contained mostly religious art.
There were so many beautiful buildings in town, it was hard to decide which ones to include but there are a few that are notable.
There are several churches in town but we only visited this one.
We visited Little Venice, one of the most photographed areas in Colmar. There is a small boat ride down the river but since we’ve been on a gondola ride in the real Venice, we passed on this ride.
In addition to walking around and looking at the very cool buildings, we had some wonderful local Alsatian cuisine.
The first two pictures are Saturday’s late lunch. Both mine (top) and Peter’s (bottom) were Cordon Bleu but with veal rather than chicken. Mine had a rich mushroom sauce while Peter’s was smothered in cheese. The Alsatian pasta was actually spaetzle, a German pasta. This was very different from the Cordon Bleu we had in Paris which was cooked in the traditional French way.
Today we had a little snack mid-morning.
Then for lunch today, Peter had a burger and I had what was basically a broiled ham and cheese sandwich but, oh, it was delicious.
Colmar is on the Alsace Wine Route which is France’s oldest wine route. It spans about 100 miles north to south along the region. We only visited a couple of them on Saturday but driving to them through the picturesque villages was a lot of fun. The wines are more of a sweet variety which I love. Peter, not so much. He didn’t even get out of the car for the 2nd one. I bought a couple bottles of lovely sweet Gewurztraminer (impossible to pronounce correctly) wines that I get to enjoy all by myself.
The only shops open today were the tourist shops and, while we only went into a couple, we really enjoyed the Christmas shop.
Even with the cloudy, cool, rainy weather, we thoroughly enjoyed our short stay in Colmar. It is well worth a visit if you ever get to this part of France. Tomorrow we head about 40 minutes northwest of here to Strasbourg where we’ll spend the next couple of days. The weather is supposed to clear up a little so maybe we’ll see the sun.
Fantastic architecture! And…..delicious looking food! It’s a good thing you are doing a lot of walking because that food does not look low calories! I’m jealous.
You are totally correct. We haven’t exactly been eating healthy food but the walking does help. At least my pants still fit.
I’ll have the Ham and Cheese without Ham. I’m sure it would have been delicious.
Amazing Stained Glass
What an amazing covered market.
Not a meat eater or just don’t like ham? We live on ham and cheese sandwiches while on holiday. We buy a baguette as well as a package of ham and one of cheese and that’s our lunch. Or, like today, if we eat a bigger lunch we’ll have sandwiches for dinner. Not sure what we’d do without them. But, you’re correct, this sandwich would have tasted just as yummy without the ham.
I don’t eat pork or beef. Starting to get away from all meat. But while in France or Rome or Italy, I would try some chicken and fish dishes.
I like seafood but I learned the hard way to stay away from it when in Europe. They tend to serve it whole, literally whole, with head, eyes, tail, etc. I had a shrimp dish in Croatia in 2016 that was insane. The shrimp were about 6 inches long and included the eyes, antenna, tail and whatever else comes on a shrimp. I didn’t even know what part of eat. I’ll have to show you a picture when I get home. It was a real mess.