Tag: Colmar

Colmar – the Unterlinden Museum and the Bartholdi Museum

When I travel and use hotel showers I often daydream about creating a hotel shower rating system. You know, showers would get points for basic things like hot water, water temperature that doesn’t fluctuate and shower cleanliness. There would be bonus points for things like a heated towel rack and big fluffy towels. I don’t like tub shower combinations so a walk in shower definitely gets point. You get the idea.

The shower in our room here at Villa Élyane in Colmar is perfect! It is one of the only 10’s I have ever rated a hotel shower. Big, bright, five shower heads, heated towel rack. Perfection!

It rained all day today so it’s a good thing that we have good raincoats and that today we visited museums.

First we went to the Unterlinden Museum. It’s a well laid out museum partly built in a former cloister.

The exhibits range from prehistoric to Roman to medieval to modern. They have part of an intricate Roman mosaic floor found nearby,

A colorful and dramatic multipart medieval altarpiece – Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece,

A treasure buried about 1630 prior to the Swedish invasion and not found until 1864,

And some powerful modern pieces.

We stopped for coffee and blueberry tart.

Then we went to the Bartholdi Museum.

On the way back to our B&B we decided we didn’t want to go back out in the rain tonight. So we stopped and bought picnic food and had dinner in our room.

Freiburg, Germany to Colmar, France

This morning when we walked to the train station in Freiburg it was raining.

To get to Colmar which is only about 35 miles directly west of Freiburg we had to take the train south to Basel in Switzerland and then go back north to Colmar.

In Colmar we are staying at a wonderful B & B near the train station, Villa Élyane. It is in a lovely old house and we have a big bright room.

Colmar is in the Alsace region of France. This afternoon we explored. Our host gave us a tourist map and we followed the tourist trail around the old town. Each of forty stopping points on the trail had an informational sign in multiple languages including English. The trail itself was marked with gold triangles set in sidewalk.

Auguste Bartholdi the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty is from Colmar. We saw a statue of him.

Duke and I each recently read a book about Bartholdi called Liberty’s Torch so it was interesting to see some of his sculptures.

Colmar is full of interesting old streets and houses.

The Colmar Spring Fair is going on right now so we saw pens of animals and lots of stalls selling everything from food to Easter decorations.

For dinner we ate at Le Fer Rouge.