I have sadly become dependent on air conditioning – a night without in Besançon was very unpleasant.
A lovely petit déjeuner on the terrace balcony, and we then set off to explore the Citadel. By mid morning it was already getting hot. The Citadel was built by Vauban, who worked for Louis 14 aka The Sun King, around 1680. It’s another marvel of military engineering. The Citadel has three museums as well as some separate sections that deal with the history of the building itself. One museum is of local history; one is on the resistance in the Second World War, appropriate because when the Nazis occupied the town it was a prison that held resistance fighters who were then executed here. The third museum is more of a mystery: it’s a series of animal related exhibits, including insects, an aquarium, a nocturnal house, a petting zoo, and various random animals dotted around the compound seemingly with no rhyme nor reason.
We looked into the history of the citadel, and chose the resistance museum out of the other three. Unfortunately it soon became as distressing as these things always are, and we raced through it in the end. We then climbed up on to the ramparts, but couldn’t stay long because of the heat. While we were looking around we came across a man dressed up in period costume. Not sure whether he was meant to be Vauban or Louis the 14th, even though he walked very close to us at one stage. He must have been awfully hot.
By early afternoon we were done, so we walked back to the hotel to pick up our car, and headed out of town. It was a couple of hours drive to Colmar. Things started to get a Germanic feel as we travelled. The churchs in the little villages looked different, and the names of the towns changed too.
Google maps did a terrific job, but dropped the ball at the final hurdle, by sending us into a blind alley around the corner from our hotel. Simon finally managed to extricate us with a multipoint turn, but I notice he’s stopped saying small cars are only of benefit when it comes to parking. Simon had made a boo boo when booking the hotel online, and they had been expecting us yesterday. So, only two nights here which is a shame because it’s fabulous. A entire retrofitted modern apartment on the top floor of a historic building. It’s right on the edge of the old town, in an area called little Venice because of its canal. It’s certainly very picturesque.
I spend the afternoon after we checked in looking at shoe shops. I thought the ones in the tourist area would be overpriced and well picked over, as they were in Beaune, but actually I found a number of good places, and ended up with a good pair of well made European shoes, comfortable and wide enough for my Kiwi bare-foot-childhood feet, and not too orthopaedic looking (I hope).
The hotel receptionist had recommended a lovely restaurant a short walk away, slightly off the beaten track which was good because the squares in the old town were thronging with people, and the restaurants packed. Our restaurant was perfect, the pick of the ones we’ve been to so far on this trip. It’s such a rare pleasure for a Wellingtonian to be able to eat outside. The temperature was in the low 20s and there was no wind. No one else in the restaurant was speaking English that we could hear, mostly it was French and German. The downside of that was that they were all smoking.