Colmar; Monday, 09 May, 2022

I had a much more leisurely timed breakfast that the previous day and headed out of the hotel a little after 10am to start my tour of some of the attractions of Colmar.

When I’d been wandering round on Saturday I’d noted that the river cruises were running very frequently, totally full and with long queues at both of the landing stages where you could pick up the tours. Clearly they were very popular on a hot sunny Saturday. So it was with a little trepidation that I headed down to the quay near the hotel wondering how long the queue would be. I needn’t have worried as it turns out at 10am on a Monday the tours are much less in demand and so I was able to get straight onto a personal tour that was just me on the boat as we sailed along a small section of the river taking in the Petit Venise area of the city.

From the river cruise I wandered over to the former Dominican Church to have a look round that, only to find out that they had recently changed their opening times and were now closed on a Monday, so I gave up on that idea and instead wandered round the corner to pick up the Petit-train vert, the green land-train tour of the town (green referring to the paint colour rather than it’s environmental credentials given this tour still used diesel powered dotto trains, whilst the petit-train blanc used electric dotto’s)

The petit train tours start and end outside the Musée Unterlinden and that was my next stop of the day. The museum is partly housed in a former convent, but over the years has expanded into a number of other buildings including a new build and a former baths. The oldest parts of the complex – the convent including the cloister and chapel – house the archaeology and religious art collections whilst the newer parts of the building house some more general collections as well as the modern art collection.

From the Musée Unterlinden it was about a 10 minute walk across town to the Musée du Jouet, which looks at toys and games over the years, with a particular focus on models and dolls – including the usual selection of disturbingly creepy dolls that were happily given to young children in the past. From the toy museum I headed back across town to the Musée Hansi for a quick look around that. The museum is dedicated to the artist Hansi who created a series of cartoons that depicted an idealised Alsatian village that was under the repression of incompetent and foolish German rulers – a good enough description of how Alsace felt under the rule of Germany for the artists to have to flee prosecution.

Having taken in the museums I wandered over to the bus stops near the theatre and picked up the local bus to head back to Turckheim to have a look around the town that I’d missed out the previous day.

Turckheim as a town is very pretty, helped by its location hemmed in by the river on one side and the mountains on the other – the latter now covered in vineyards. With the mountains coming down towards the river on one end the town is squeezed inside a triangular footprint with three gates guarding the line of it’s fortifications – all three still in situ and so it’s possible to get a really good view of what the town would have looked like for centuries.

I spent quite some time wandering around the town before it was time to head back to the station to catch the train back into Colmar (the last buses having left some time before). From Colmar station I walked back to the hotel to turn in for the night.