|
2008rench
Road Trip
Nov 14 - 23, 2008
Trip Journal
|
Strasbourg - Colmar
La
Sciere |
|
Although
we would have breakfast at 8:30am only, we woke up early anyway.
I was outside on the deck area at 7am and found the beautiful sun
was rising. The La Dame Blanche is so beautiful, it situates
in a very
small
village (only 5 families and total 22 people)
over-looking
an infinite lawn. I wish I would someday have a house like
this (probably would only happen in my dream :p). ¡@
We
had a busy schedule today. We would further drive east to a
historic city Strasbourg (126km) and then turned south down to
Colmar. After Colmar we would be westbound again going back
Paris
direction. ¡@
Strasbourg,
very close to the border to Germany, is the capital and principal
city of the Alsace région in northeastern France and
have been annexed several times by France and Germany in the past
200 years.
The
whole of Strasbourg town centre, the "Grande Ile" has been listed as
World Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. It is very rare for an
entire town centre to receive this distinction, and in 1988
Strasbourg was the first site in France to receive such an honour.
This photo on the right is the Cathedral seen through Rue Mercière,
which is one of the notable medieval streets in Strasbourg.
The
Kammerzell House (on the left) is one of the most famous buildings
of Strasbourg and one of the most ornate and well preserved medieval
civil housing buildings in late Gothic architecture in the areas
formerly belonging to the Holy Roman Empire. Built in 1427 but
twice transformed in 1467 and 1589, the building as it is now
historically belongs to the German Renaissance but is stylistically
still attached to the Rhineland black and white timber-framed style
of civil (as opposed to administrative, clerical or noble)
architecture. The building's inside has been decorated on all
floors by lavish frescoes by Alsatian painter Léo Schnug
(1878-1933). It now houses a restaurant. ¡@
It's
12:30noon, should get something
to eat. We all love sausages so we stopped at this shop
selling pretzels and hotdogs. We ordered 2 long dogs and
shared.. the cheesy one was good but not the other which was stuffed
with choucroute.
We
walked around for another hour then headed down north to Colmar
(75km). It was 3pm when we got in there. Found the
Statue of Liberty at the town's entrance. Turned out the
creator & sculptor, Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), of the statue now
standing in NYC was born in Colmar. ¡@
The whole city
of Colmar was decorated with X'mas
ornaments and
X'mas
trees.
Very romantic! ¡@
We left Colmar
at around 3:45pm for our chambre for the night, La Sciere (115km),
which from the map situates on a mountain. It was completely
dark by 5pm and we were almost there but were still climbing
mountains with no lighting on the roads. To add more salt to
it, it was raining and foggy. Alan was swearing and sighing
until our
GPS
told us that we were arriving at destination! ¡@
La Sciere is a
lovely mountain cottage. It smelt of wood and stone. Our
host Corinne took us to our chambres and told us to go down to her
kitchen to have dinner at
7pm.
There
we went sitting around Corinne's dining
table at her
cozy
kitchen with her husband.
She made a
traditional French dish which pleased the men very much. It
was sausages and lentils. Regardless of the simplicity of it,
it was very tasty. Our dessert was apple tart, equally
delicious. Drank 1 bottle of white and 2 reds with the couple.
Kevin became very talkative, as he usually is after a few drinks.
We laughed the night away and found ourselves in beds by 10:30pm.
We decided we should start the next day earlier so we said we would
have breakfast at 8am instead. Bonne nuit! ¡@
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