What a charming place Colmar old town is!
Reasonable nights sleep although it was a bit hotter than I’d hoped in spite of the air conditioning. We only discovered the shutters for the windows after we’d gotten up, I think keeping them closed during the day will help to keep things cooler. I also plan on opening the upstairs window tonight, because it’s actually chilly once the sun goes down.
A lovely breakfast in an old courtyard. The hotel is full of English speaking tourists, which at least means the breakfasts will have stuff more to our taste like cereal, which isn’t really a European thing as far as I can tell.
Simon found a tour online that works entirely through an app. The unusual thing about it is that it starts at the tourist office where you pick up a bag of goodies that you get to open at various points during the tour. It’s very well designed. You get guided from place to place with a written description, photos and a back up map, all on your phone. It works well as we never got lost. As you reach specific locations it guides you to, it gives you a description and bit of history about it. The old town is surprisingly well preserved, I don’t know how really? Surely it should have burnt down a few times over the years and been bombed by one side or another in WW2? A mystery.
The gifts included edible treats like jam and gingerbread, and little souvenirs like a fridge magnet and a Xmas ornament. The whole thing was great and I hope they do the same thing in other cities. Simon thinks there should be a guide that can tell you what you can see based on your location using GPS or similar technology. I quite like the fun of following the directions though.
Some much needed downtime during the heat of the early afternoon, before our second tour of the day, this time in person and with a culinary theme. We walked to the meeting place, where a number of other tour guides were also waiting. One tour guide, who was with Viking, asked me what tour I was waiting for, but in a different language I didn’t recognise. I wish I knew what country she thought I was from? Just vaguely gratified she didn’t speak to me in English, I’m not sure why.
Eventually we found our guide, a young woman born and bred in Colmar. We then spent the next 90 minutes going back through the old town. There wasn’t as much overlap with our previous tour as we’d feared, and in fact they complimented each other quite nicely. She gave us some samples of local foods – a bread roll made of the same dough as pretzels, some gingerbread, a local light chewy biscuit, and a lemon honey boiled lolly. It turns out her mother works at the same hotel we’re staying at, and the restaurant recommendation she gave us was for a place just a few metres from the front door.
Last night we had a French meal sitting in the open air, and tonight we had a much more German influenced meal sitting inside. I had some bizarre dish made up of cheese, fried potatoes and a sour cream dip, and Simon had sauerkraut with big lumps of meat. The people around us were speaking a wide variety of languages which was great – I was sorely tempted to help out the Italians at the next table but refrained, probably wisely. My Italian is a bit rusty now. The best part was that because we were inside, no one could smoke. Another lovely day, our last full day in France.
