Today we visited Colmar which is about 30 minutes by train from Strasbourg. It is another medieval city which I thought was also a world heritage site, but we couldn’t find any reference to it in the town so I may have just made that up! We didn’t want to arrive too early as, again it has a number of Christmas markets which probably don’t open too early so in the end we left the hotel about 10:00, having had breakfast in the room of coffee and snacks! The train was remarkably easy to navigate, and very comfortable especially compared to the ones at home. It was actually heading for Basel in Switzerland which is only about an hour and 20 minutes away, I don’t think until we came here I realised just how close the area is to Germany and Switzerland the border with Germany is only about 5 miles away although the nearest town is a bit further. Two stops on the train later and we were in Colmar, it is just as cold here as it was in Strasbourg this morning! So we set off in search of the village and the Christmas Markets, they very helpfully have put up signs showing you a walking route to the town centre, but unfortunately they want you to walk through a Christmas market which was actually closed and fenced off so we had to walk round the side of it and then lost the road signs! The good news is that everything is quite close together so we soon found the right area. We followed the signs to Little Venice, on the way we saw the Dominican church was dates back to the first half of the 14th century which is very imposing. The whole town seems much more intimate and less touristy in some way, despite the fact that pretty much every shop was selling some form of Christmas decoration or things aimed at tourists such as postcards. All the same the houses were lovely and very colourful, especially when we got to Little Venice which is so called because the only way to access the houses on either side of the River Launch was by the river, this is no longer the case and now has a number of bridges which criss cross the river providing fantastic views of the houses. This area leads into the Fishmongers district which is where most of the professional fishermen and boatmen of Colmar lived. In 1706 a fire destroyed a number of the buildings in this area but luckily they have been restored and now provide a stunning backdrop to the river. Also in this area is the Covered Market, which is a brick building designed in 1865, it isn’t very large but has a variety of stalls selling, meat, fish, cheese, fruit and vegetables all of which looked wonderful, although we didn’t actually buy anything! I do like proper markets, I am not sure when or why we lost them in the UK but we really are missing out, we have been to some fantastic ones over the years! We visited a couple of the Christmas markets, which if anything seem smaller than those in Strasbourg, they weren’t really selling anything particularly different and as it was so cold we didn’t linger too long, in the end we decided to go and find somewhere to have lunch so that we could try and warm up a bit. We walked a little way out of the main tourist / Christmas market area where everything wasn’t quite so busy and found a nice little restaurant that sold pasta, pizza, crepes and flambé, we had originally planned to have a pizza and a crepe, but we were so full after the pizza we ended up with just a coffee before heading out into the cold again. We decided to visit a few more of the Christmas markets before heading back to the station, to be honest this was more an opportunity to wonder in and out of some of the medieval squares, it also gave us the opportunity to find the Dominican convent, this was founded by the Sisters of St Catherine in 1310 but was not consecrated until 1371. It is a very plain building but with the most elaborate spire on the top and what looks like a massive birds nest! Then it was time to walk back to the station to catch the train back to Strasbourg, again very easy and comfortable. We arrived by in Strasbourg about 4pm and went back to the hotel to relax and start filling out the paperwork for our return to the UK the day after tomorrow.
