Colmar

Wednesday and we were up early - had to (almost) bash Tom’s door down as he didn’t wake up even though he swears he had alarms set (think we woke everyone up in the corridor!)  Got to Gare de Lille Europe and got the TGV to Strasbourg.  A very pleasant trip - watching the flat countryside go by.  We stopped at Paris Charles de Gaulle (could see the Tour d’Eiffel), somewhere in the champagne region and Meuse and Lorraine before arriving in Strasbourg on time, time for lunch.  We had 2.5 hours layover, so what should we do…look for lunch of course.  

We wheeled our suitcases up a couple of streets and found a nice restaurant with outdoor seating.   First item was a basket of pretzels, (we are only 2.5 miles from Germany after all) and then a main course.  Tom went for curry wurst, Matt for hot dog with pork knuckle and I thought I would be good and go for a salad.  I ordered salad Strasbourgeise, not that sure what it would be, saw another table with a salad on it, it had beetroot, carrots, celeriac etc, I was excited…it arrived, it was basically a heap of grated emmental and ham, in fact Matt had more salad (veg) on his plate than me.  Oh hum, always a risk ordering something you aren’t sure of.  I will try again!

We returned to the station for our TGV train to Colmar, arrived, found our hotel, The Grand Hotel Bristol nethertheless, checked in and got our rooms - this time we had connecting rooms, and (of course) Tom’s was bigger and better than ours.  Rooms have air conditioning and shutters so we were all happy.  We then headed out to Colmar Ville Vieux - wowzers, what a place.  All old buildings with overhanging walls, exposed wooden beams, very steep rooves in a myriad of colours.  

There were canals running through too.  By now it was mid afternoon and very hot and we were getting quite hot and bothered, so we booked ourselves a boat ride on the canal and then headed into some souviner shops.  Didn’t take long…Tom fell in love with an animal - this time a stork - which is the bird of the region.  To be fair it is quite cute and goofy of course.

 boat ride was very pleasant, the designer of the statue of Liberty came from Colmar, we saw a bridge that the US troops installed during the war that is still in use today, but we didn’t find out why there were canals in the town, obviously for trade but not sure what trade?

After the boat ride we were parched, so we all headed into the nearest establishment for a large panaché each, it is shandy sort of weather, we all wanted something cold, wet and not too alcoholic.  Goofy stork was then christened Panaché.

We were quite comfortable, so decided to eat there too - seems that you can get a tart flambé for a reasonable price (€10-15 or something else for €25-40) We all went for tart flambé - basically a very thin pizza.  Bacon and cheese for Matt and me and salmon for Tom.

We then returned to our hotel, via Carrefour City for some drinks and snacks, showers, a couple of rounds of Uno and bed.