November 12, 2006: Colmar, France

We had considered renting a car in Strasbourg or Colmar, but those plans were shot to hell—none of the car rental places were open today. So we all took the train to Colmar—about a 20-minute trip. We got rooms at the Hotel Kempf and dropped our bags off, then we wandered through the “old city”, which included “Little Venice”.

Colmar is a very pretty Alsatian town—with lots of really old half-timbered buildings, and they’re all painted in pastels. It’s like a postcard! It was awesome and wonderful.

We enjoyed a lunch of soup at a little tea room—Anne had vegetable soup with noodles, I had the best cream of broccoli soup EVER, and Bill had a cream of escargot soup. (We all tasted each other’s—they were all good!) Then we shared a plate of cheeses, and I discovered a cheese that I’m not fond of—Munster. We noticed as we were eating that the background music consisted of American showtunes! The lady at the tea salon was very pleased to be chatting with Americans—she told Anne and Bill that they spoke French with no accent: an extremely nice compliment, to be sure. I’m so envious!

We then wandered through town, took lots of pictures, and stopped at another nice place for a hot drink; first I got hot chocolate and Anne & Bill tried the "vin chaud"--but then when we decided to just stay for another drink, they each had a beer while I got my own mulled wine (vin chaud = hot wine). It was delicious! It had star anise in it, among other things--the star anise made me crave my mother's homemade anise candy. :) Afterward we walked around more and found another nice little restaurant for dinner. It was obviously family owned, and when I tried to order the lamb cutlets, they had changed the menu offerings and didn't have that anymore, so I ended up with grilled duck. Delicious! Again for dessert I tried to order "mousse aux deux chocolats" (two-chocolate mousse) but alas, they didn't have that either so I got profiteroles instead: little eclair-like pastries, each with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream inside, and lots of chocolate syrup. Anne ordered the "crunching with chocolate" which was essentially chocolate mousse on a little thin cake with chocolate chips in it (hence the crunching, I suppose!) Then back to our hotel--not a bad hotel at all, but it's the one I've liked least so far...I suppose I got a little spoiled having the apartment first. :)