Down to Colmar

Today we made a day-trip down to Colmar, which is a smaller version of Strasbourg, with an old town and Little Venice. It's about an hour's drive south by car.

You can see my favourite Colmar photos on Flickr here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646118297375/

I'd found us a free parking space, where we could park for free for three hours with one of those blue 'discs' that Europe has, where you put the time you arrived on it and then you know how long you can park until.

I didn't really have any plan in mind for Colmar. I wanted to visit Petite Venice but I didn't really 'want' to see anything else. The very centre of Colmar was very tourist-oriented - there were people waving petitions for the blind and deaf, a petite train and tourists everywhere. We immediately tried to find some space - it wasn't too difficult, because the main drag in Colmar is a fair bit wider than some of the other tourist places I've been, like Venice and Strasbourg for instance.

We ended up at this really nice square, which is bordered by a church of sorts. There were flowerbeds and typical old French buildings all around it:

Square in Colmar

After some more wandering we found our way to Petite Venice. It's a smaller version of what you see in Strasbourg, with narrower canals and narrower walkways. Still very pretty though:

Petite Venice

With not much left to see we wandered back to the car again. I got us some meringues on the way, they seem to be a thing in Alsace. Blueberry, lemon and this weird local flavour were the orders of the day.

Some of the other photos from Colmar

We returned the long way, going over the Rhine. We stopped to watch a container ship go from the lower level to the upper level of a lock. It was amazingly fast, given that it had to travel up such a distance. Here the bridge of the ship even automatically lowers down so it can fit under the gap:

A ship in one of the Rhine's many locks

We got back in the car and journeyed back to Strasbourg just in time - a thunderstorm started to roll in. By the time we got back to Strasbourg it was dry though. Tomorrow we'll head to Illange, which will be our base for two days while we explore Luxembourg. Until then!