A leisurely day of strolling through Colmar’s old town, followed by a wine tasting. We headed down to the old part of Colmar which is a delightful town in the Alsace region of France. But because of its proximity to the German border there is a very strong influence of that culture as well. Irv had discovered Colmar on our previous trip to France when he came to the Alsace region while my sister and I made acquaintances with our cousins in Annecy. He was familiar with the wines of the region and used Colmar as his base while exploring the vineyards in the area.
Colmar is a delightful town, with both French and German influences abounding. Walking through the town it is hard not to be impressed by the buildings - many of them in the typical German half-timbered style and often colourfully and imaginatively decorated. There are also a couple of Gothic style churches to add to the medieval ambience. We had parked away from the centre of town, so had a good walk down to our destination of ‘La Petite Venise’ - Little Venice. There are two beautiful Gothic churches in the centre of town as well, and on top of one of them we saw a huge stork’s nest complete with stork!
Colmar was the rope in a tug-of-war between France and Germany for many years until it was finally ceded to the French in 1945. This is evident in the mixture of French and German signage throughout the city. One feature of Colmar is the Lauch canal that runs throughout and upon which you can take a leisurely ride in a flat-bottomed wooden boat. We opted to do this and quite enjoyed seeing the place from the water’s perspective. After wandering around a bit more , we decided that lunch was in order so stopped at a street-side cafe to nosh on a local dish - ‘tarte flambée’. This is essentially a very thin crusted pizza-like dish with a variety of choices for toppings. Pam and I opted for the poulet et poivrons, Irv had the Munster and Geoff tried the Chorizo. All very yummy!
At that point we decided we’d best head back to the car to get going out to Turckheim, where we had reservations for a wine tasting at Zind Humbrecht, a winery with which Irv was familiar, having visited it on his last trip, and having sold their product at Vines. Unfortunately when we arrived they said we hadn’t confirmed our reservation, but they were most accommodating and we ended up doing a wonderful tasting with a very knowledgeable and friendly young woman. The winery has an extensive collection of many different wines and we were able to sample five of them - pinot gris, riesling and gewürztraminer. They were all very good and we ended up purchasing a couple of bottles to take back to the flat to enjoy.
We opted to eat in for dinner so Pam, Geoff and I headed over to the local Super U to pick up the makings of a salmon dinner to go with our newly-acquired wine. After that, Pam and I decided to head out to find the monument to Auguste Bartholdi, the man who designed “Liberty Enlightening the World” better know as the Statue of Liberty. It is at the corner of a beautiful park which is also the home of a rather ornate structure which had the more mundane purpose of a water tower.
Back to the flat to prep and then enjoy dinner, and thus ended our first day here in Colmar.