Colmar, France

Colmar is in the northern Alsace Lorraine region of France. I chose to visit it as it was the finish line of one of the stages for the Tour de France. Seeing the Tour has been on my bucket list for some time. After looking at all the stages I chose Colmar because of the beauty of it’s Old Town. The buildings are mostly timber and mortar and haven’t changed much in centuries. It was fortunate to escape bombing by either side during WWII.

When I got off the train the bus stop was right across the street. When I showed the address to the bus driver, he said yes and said, “remember the Statue of LIberty”. Ok, made a little more sense when the video screen on the bus showed one of the stops to be named Statue of Liberty. Light bulb lit fully when I got off at my stop and found a 4 story tall Statue of Liberty in the middle of the traffic roundabout! Turns out the sculptor of the statue is from Colmar.

As you can see the Old Town is all decked out for the Tour!

I spent a couple days just wandering all over the Old Town. There are canals throughout this part of town, so much that it has the nickname of “Little Venice”. The tourist map I got from the hotel us pretty helpful once you get oriented. There isn’t any rhyme or reason as to how the town is laid out, maybe it was that way so invaders couldn’t get a straight run through town. I wound up backtracking a couple of times, but it was so pretty I didn’t mind.

The house on the left has some wooden storks as decoration. The stork appears to be the mascot of the town, they sell stuffed toy storks at all the tourist shops. I didn’t see a single stork while I was there, must not have been stork season.

I had to look twice at this restaurant. The trim around the door and windows is painted on, not actual woodwork.

This is the covered market with a little restaurant on the canal. The market inside is just like a farmer’s market and I got supplies for dinner here a couple of times. The restaurants specialty is Torte Flambe. It’s sort of like a pizza but not really. Thin savory pastry crust with a light cream sauce and then meat or vegetables on top with a little cheese. It was very good and paired well with the local beer. The whole restaurant sounded like everyone was eating toast! The floor of the restaurant is wooden planking so I’m sure the fish below are big fans of the Tarte as well.

Not sure if the colors of the roof tiles are showing up, they are green and red. I can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into creating and maintaining these works of art, but I really loved the look of them.

This is my first post with photos and it took me about 3 hours and 3 drafts to get it done. System wanted to autosave everything and it kept getting stuck! I am heading to the nearest trattoria to get a beer! Tour de France will be next.