alsace

by

Sunday in another Country

We awoke to a mix of sun and cloud in Strasbourg, France, on Sunday, October 27th, 2024.

The view from our room.

The balcony looked a bit sketchy to me. I think the pigeon is heavier than he appears.

The view of our room.

Breakfast was included with our room and we ate a very average meal before we checked out. They did let us check our bags for the day so we could go out exploring before our train trip back to Paris.

When I had looked up Strasbourg on the map, I noticed that it was right up against the border with Germany and there were bridges to cross the Rhine River to the city of Kehl. I was looking forward to adding Germany to my country count as that gets me to 8 I believe. Lol

We headed to the tram that would take us across the border.

At least that was our plan. We managed to pick a tram that went near the bridge and back to town.

So, we strolled onto the bridge and towards Germany.

Straddling the border. My left foot is in Germany and my right in France.

There was 1 lady sitting on the top deck enjoying her coffee all by her lonesome.

The flowers in Germany still looked good as well.

We walked down to the river and wandered through Rhein Promenade – riverside peace park.

We walked along the river for a bit and we went over to Weißtannenturm – Well-known observation tower on the Rhine with views of France & the Black Forest.

It’s a 30 meter climb to the top, or, if my math was correct, 198 steps.

I tried, but failed to get anyone to climb up with me, so I slowly made my way to the top. And the view was totally worth it.

A panorama with my 40mm lens.

My traveling companions keeping the bench warm.

A panorama with my 85mm lens.

The Kehl water tower. It’s a 50 meter tower that was built in 1904. It was shutdown in 1980 and the tower was renovated in 2003. Apparently, it’s a very popular tourist attraction, but we didn’t go over there.

@spookie_bugz posed for me at the top of the tower in the homeland of his forefathers.

A panorama with my 18mm lens.

I had lollygagged at the top long enough, so I descended to meet up with my group at ground level.

We decided to walk along the lake to explore the town a bit.

As we walked along, the church bells tolled. I can’t link a video on here because I’m too cheap to pay for that plug in, but they sounded very nice.

While we were looking at the water I noticed a couple of turtles. And, with heavy cropping, so can you.

As we got near the end of the lake, we veered off to go more into town. We passed by Stadthalle and saw there was a tattoo convention going on. Decided I didn’t need any ink, so we kept walking.

We made our way to Market Square and saw the rather impressive Friedenskirche – Protestant church.

And I thought mosquitos were big in Canada.

We walked around the square trying to decide where we should find some lunch. Being Sunday, choices were a bit limited.

We decided that the patio at el Bolero Mexican restaurant looked good.

I thoroughly enjoyed a very good strawberry margarita while looking at Friedenskirche, awaiting what turned out to be some very good Mexican food.

I wandered around the square a bit more after lunch grabbing a few more church photos before we moved on to see what else was around.

We wandered up and down a couple of streets. Not a lot of things grabbed my attention but I liked the sign on the building.

I found another pretzel. We also got some for the road as we figured it was time to head back to Strasbourg. This time, we took the tram right across the river and into the middle of downtown.

I tried to grab as many photos as I could in the late afternoon light.

Another round building from a wide angle panorama.

We came across the bilingual French-English church, Liberté! Church and I liked the way the sun was hitting it but it was pretty tight quarters to photography it.

I think Curtis was starting to look for places to grab supper.

Soon we were wandering by Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg. It is a massive Catholic Church that, was the world’s tallest building for 227 years (between 1647 and 1874), and, when we were there, was bathed in some nice pre-sunset light. Unfortunately, the square in front of the church is much too small to easily photograph it to show it in all it’s glory. I tried to shoot it as a panorama but I didn’t like my results, so I’ll include a few pieces of church shots.

It was pretty crowded around the church so we headed off and found ourselves at Place Gutenberg. I liked how the buildings were lit up and the Carrousel looked interesting. I mean, it’s not everyday I see a 2 level merry-go-round.

My sunset light was gone and it was time to find some food. We ended up at The Dubliners, an Irish Restaurant. We sat outside and I enjoyed a really good burger watching the world walk by.

It was fully dark when we made our way in the general direction of the hotel to pickup our bags.

Bags retrieved, we headed over to the train station for our 2 hourish trip back to Paris.

There really wasn’t much to see along the way being dark and all. The photo I took of Lucille and Curtis “not sleeping” will remain on my phone and not be seen here.

As we approached Gare de l’Est, Curtis decided he didn’t want to take the subway and walk, so he arranged an Uber to pick us up. It was my first Uber experience. Seemed okay.

We got back to the apartment a little before midnight and went to bed pretty much on arrival.

I got in almost 18 and a half thousand steps today. Not bad all in all.

by

On the rails again

Since our visit to France was going to be a bit of a whirlwind compared to our 1st visit, I wanted to get in as much sightseeing as possible.

With that in mind, I had looked into a few different options for day trips so Lynda could see some countryside like she wanted. I had considered going to Rouen to check out the Normandy area. I had also considered trying to go to Reims to check out the Champagne region. I thought that one might get a bit expensive since my bride has no dislike of champagne.

Lucille suggested going to Colmar way over on the eastern side of France. Once I looked it up and saw it was a bit south of Strasbourg and near the German border, I was in.

So we were up and on our way long before it was bright and early on Saturday, October 26th to catch the TGV at Gare de l’Est.

It had rained overnight and there was a crispness in the air, but not a lot of people on the streets.

We walked over to Café circus, up the hill and through Butte-aux-Cailles to Place d’Italie so we could catch the metro.

It was about a 20 minute ride to the train station and it wasn’t all that long a wait before we were boarding the TGV.

It doesn’t take very long to get out of Paris and up to speed in the countryside and we were soon zooming along at speeds up to 320 km/hr. It was hard to get any good photos of the outside world through the window as it zooms by at those speeds. So I took a “self portrait” while we were in a tunnel.

We got to Strasbourg in just under 2 hours and it wasn’t a very long wait to catch the train to Colmar.

It was only a half hour ride this time.

Colmar is a pretty small place and their train station didn’t seem to have any obvious luggage lockers, so we went in search of a luggage drop as our 1st stop.

It was fairly close to the station and once we were unencumbered, we set off in search of a pretzel. I mean, adventure.

As we got into the old town, Lynda spied an outdoor market and as we were heading in that direction, I found a pretzel place. The pretzel was good but a whole lot saltier than I liked.

Narrow streets and old buildings. How could I not take photos?

Even though it wasn’t even noon yet, we started searching for a lunch spot as we’d been up for quite a while already.

No luck at the first place.

The long row of Jack Daniels bottles caught my eye.

Collégiale Saint-Martin de Colmar is a lot bigger and a lot less round than my photo would suggest. Doing a multi frame panorama is a problem when using a wide angle lens hand held, but I didn’t have the patience to shoot a lot more frames with a tighter field of view.

It was lightly misting as we walked around and we were actually getting a bit cold, so we stopped at Café Jupiler to grab some lunch. We were almost a half hour early for food service so I grudgingly (happily) had a coffee as we waited. The café was pretty full and they put us way in the back. It had an interesting decor, but like the opera house, some ugly lighting.

We enjoyed our drinks and ordered lunch as soon as we could. It was a decent meal and once done, we headed back outside to explore.

My bride and Lucille crossed the road in search of souvenirs. Shockingly, I just waited and took a photo or two.

We wandered around some more checking stuff out and we arrived at Place de la Mairie and I took photos of Carrousel Hôtel de Ville de Colmar. Which, I see from Google Maps, is now permanently closed.

As we wandered around the streets, Curtis said it would be nice to have an app that showed us where we’d been. I went, “Hey, I have a couple of those to track my walking.” So I enable my MapMyWalk app.

I probably should have actually looked at the map because we didn’t know exactly where the canal zone that’s called Little Venice was, so we asked Curtis to find the canal. Apparently we needed to be a bit more specific with him as he used his phone map and took us out of town to the canal. At least it was a nice day for a walk. I know it doesn’t look like it, but when I zoom in on the app our route resembles art work a 4 your old would draw on the wall.

The canal we got to.

We took a different road back and I found a few more interesting things to photograph as we walked towards the canal we were looking for.

I don’t know what this head was all about, but I thought it was interesting. Creepy, but interesting.

There were more nice flowers still blooming than I would have expected near the end of October.

We found the canal we were looking for. We had take the scenic route but it’s not like we had anything planned to do that we were missing out on.

We walked past some of the original wall that protected the city to get to Marché Couvert Colmar. Erected in 1865, this covered venue features merchants selling produce, meat, cheese & more.

There was lots of interesting stuff to see in the market but it isn’t overly easy to photograph.

We went back outside to check out the neighbourhood before looking over the canal area a little more.

As we walked, we came across Fontaine Roesselmann.

I really did enjoy wandering around those old, narrow streets. I know that for the people living there, it’s just part of everyday life to see that, but for me, it was an awesome field trip.

These little trains were everywhere and usually full of people, not many of which were actually smiling though.

We headed back towards the market area and it was getting a bit busier again.

We found another train and a canal.

When we were looking into coming to Colmar, the guide book suggested that a half day was all you needed to see the town. We thought that was reasonable and decided that going back to Strasbourg for the night so to spend a day there, would be a good plan. So, we started heading back to get our luggage and then make our way to the train station.

They didn’t look much like Christmas trees, but most of the trees on this street had colored ball hanging from them.

The train station is undergoing renovations so I couldn’t capture it in all it’s glory.

I thought another TGV was passing through and got all ready for a high speed pass, but it turned out to be pulling in so I never got the shot I thought I would.

My last photo in Colmar was the inside of the train station.

We had spent well over half a day exploring Colmar and it was very dark when we got to Hôtel des Arts Strasbourg to check in and drop off our bags before we went out to find some supper.

I believe we tried Au Vieux Strasbourg. It wasn’t very far from the hotel. I know I didn’t enjoy the waiter’s attitude, but the food was okay. Hence, why I’m not totally sure of where we ate.

We headed back to the hotel right after supper for a fairly early night. We had another full day of exploring ahead of us again tomorrow.

Thanks to Curtis’ directions, I had managed to get just over 21 thousand steps today. My biggest total so far on our trip.