Colmar; Saturday, 07 May, 2022

I had an OK nights sleep, though it would have been better if I’d had the King size bed that I’d booked rather than the small twin beds in the deluxe room that I’d been upgraded to. I had a quick breakfast and then checked out and headed over to the station to catch the train.

Basel SBB station has a whole separate section for the SNCF trains that run north into France, with customs offices and even immigration guards on duty (though mostly on the Swiss side rather than the French). It also means that rather than being able to buy your ticket from the very user friendly SBB machines in the main ticket hall you have to try and use the badly designed (and French only) ticket machines in the SNCF part of the station, or give up and just use the SNCF app to purchase a ticket on the spot.

An uneventful train ride up to Colmar, during which my ticket that had taken quite so much trouble to get a hold of wasn’t checked at all. From the station I walked the kilometre or so through to the old town and my hotel for the next few nights. I was very early, way before the normal checkin time, so I hoped to be able to drop off my bags and come back to checkin, but the very friendly lady on checkin had a quick look and let me know that my room was already available and I could have it now.

Having dropped off my stuff in the room I headed out of the hotel and went for a wander around town.

I spent a good couple of hours wandering around the spectacular historic city centre. Almost every building is half-timbered and the combined effect would probably have a theme-park designer saying someone had unrealistically overdone it.

I stopped in a very pleasant café by the former Dominican Church for a late afternoon beer in the sun before wandering round the corner to pick up the petit-train blanc, one of two different land-trains that run in the town.

Having done the circuit I had a bit more of a wander before going back to the hotel to freshen up before heading back out a little later to grab some dinner and have a wander round the town centre at dusk before returning to the hotel for a good night sleep.