The rest of our time in Colmar, France

The time spent in Colmar was very relaxing.  We didn’t venture out of the town.

We did not have a car so I had to walk to get groceries.  Usually I went every other day to pick up some supplies.  There are 3 different stores I had to choose from.  Lidl is like Aldi and that is where I found some good deals.  Simply Market is like Food Lion and it was the closest to me.  Monoprix is more like the Martins back home.  We are eating meals that we like but not a lot of variety.  The rentals we are staying in have the basic cooking supplies but no extras.  I did find a roast beef and attempted to cook it.  I’m not real good at doing this at home but we wanted something different.  It was edible but I think I will wait until we get back home to do that again.

We planned to go to Switzerland to get fondue.  But we ended up not doing this.  The weather was cold.  The train tickets to get to Basel cost $70 and it would cost about $100 for cheese fondue.  The dessert part of the meal at The Melting Pot is Holly & Katie’s favorite part.  So we decided to skip doing this and go to The Melting Pot sometime when we are home.

We did go to le Musee du Jouet.  It is a toy museum in Colmar.  They had a room of trains.  Displays of old Barbies.  And a display of old dolls.  Some of them looked a little creepy.  I wouldn’t want them in my room while sleeping.  They also had displays of bible scenes and movies using playmobile.  I use to play with these with my brother when I was a kid.  Here are a few pictures from the museum.

 Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.  Moses is the figure on the right.  He is holding up a staff so the Israelites can cross.  The Egyptians are up above following them.  I can’t wait to see Moses next year at Sight and Sound.

 Noah’s Ark

 David and Goliath

 Little Red Riding Hood

 The Gingerbread Man

 Hansel & Gretel

 Pirates of the Caribbean

 Jurassic Park

 Ice Age

 Lord of the Rings.  I’m not sure of this one.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen this movie and I don’t remember an elephant.  Maybe I got the signs confused.  This is either for Lord of the Rings or Hannibal.

In the old town there are lots of shops to explore and spend your money if you choose to do so.  I enjoyed window shopping.  Unfortunately Holly and Katie are not into shopping.  Is that good or bad?  They did not want to go with me.  I think they get their lack of shopping enthusiasm from their Mimi.  I enjoyed myself and I got to go at my own pace.  They did go with me one day to look around.

Here are a few pictures of the town

 I wonder what it would be like to live in this old part of town.  What does it look like inside? Or this one. 

                    

 They call Colmar “little Venice” because it has a canal running though it.  They even have gondolas to take a ride during the warmer months.

 We did buy one of these little guys.  Yummy!

We ate out only once while in Colmar.  I gave the kids a choice of American style food or french food.  They choose American so we ate at Oh Happy Days.  They sell this gigantic burger.  We went for the regular option.  And it wasn’t as good as home.

Our last weekend in Colmar began Les Marches de Noel de Colmar – the Colmar Christmas Markets.  It started on Friday November 22nd.  We were to leave originally on Saturday but the owners let us stay an extra day for free so we could enjoy the market.  It was cold, in the low 40s, so it felt like Christmas.  I hear that Germany is famous for it’s Christmas Markets.  We were there to early to find out.  But I would have to guess that Colmar is right up there with Germany for them.  There were 5 different areas with stalls set up to sell things.  One of them was inside – to warm up.  And one was geared towards kids.  Holly and Katie’s favorite was a stall selling fruit dipped in chocolate.  We visited both Friday and Saturday.  They had pineapple dipped in chocolate.  I got to try and it was delicious!  I even had a couple glasses of hot wine to warm me up.

I didn’t get as many pictures of the market as I should have.  I was too busy looking at everything.  Here are some of the pictures I did take.

 A Ferris Wheel

      

As I post these I see that I only got pictures of the rides the kids could get on.  Oops.

 This is our rental.  Our apartment is the right side, first floor.

And this is the view from our living room window.

  

 

Quick Venice update

I have more to tell about Colmar but I wanted to share our Venice experience with you.

We flew Easyjet out of Charles du Galle airport in Paris.  Our flight left at 12:25 and everything was going fine until the pilot’s announcement.  He said that we could not fly into Venice because the baggage handlers were on strike and there would be no one to unload the plane.  (But I didn’t check any bags so you can just drop us off.)  Instead we flew in Bologna.

See quite a bit away!  Easyjet did hire buses to drive us to Venice Marco Polo airport – nice of them.  The drive took about 2 hours.  So we arrived in Venice around 5 pm instead of 2 pm.  Just an extra 3 hours to our trip.  But we did make it to our rental and all is well now.  Please pray that the strike is over by Friday when we are to return to Paris.

 

1st week in Colmar, France

It took 3 trains to get from Munich to Colmar.  The first train we did not have assigned seats so we had to go looking for empty ones.  We found a train car that did not have reserved seats but none of them were together.  We had to sit separate but they were all within a few rows of each other.  On the Bahn (German trains) there is a digital sign above each row showing if the seat is reserved for anyone.  So we just looked for some that were blank.  It’s pretty easy to use.  Our second train took us from Stuttgart Germany to Strasbourg France.  It was our first double decker train.  We had seats on top which was nice for looking at the scenery but not so nice for carrying up 3 heavy suitcases.  But I managed.

We got into Colmar around 3:30.  The owner of the apartment we are renting picked us up at the airport along with his son.  Olivier does not speak English but his son does so he was able to translate for us.  The apartment is nice.  It is 2 bedrooms with a combined kitchen and living room area.  I do have a washing machine but again no dryer.  It takes a long time to finish a load of laundry since it has to air dry.  I try to do 1 load every 2 or 3 days to keep up on it.  The machines are always in another language so before I even wash a load I have to translate the words written on the machine.

I have a confession to make.  The first week in London I bought what I thought was laundry soap at the store.  It took me a few weeks before I realized I had not bought soap but fabric softener.  So our clothes were soft but not getting clean.  And the label was in English.  I didn’t even have the excuse of a foreign language.  Not one of my smartest moves on this trip.

We will be spending 3 weeks in Colmar, France.  It is located in NE France close to the borders of Germany and Switzerland.  It is a cute town with a pedestrian area in the old part.  It has a lot of German influence in its buildings.

This first week we haven’t done very much.  We caught up on some schoolwork and just relaxed.  We won’t be doing too much while we are here in Colmar.  It will mostly be for relaxing.  The last weekend we are here is the beginning of the Christmas Markets which will last through the New Year.  We are planning on taking the train to Switzerland some time next week for the day.  We will travel to Basel which is the first large city near us.

 This is the bakery near us that has some incredible European bread!

Here are pictures of Colmar…

        

 

 

News of our trip

We are going to be coming back home early.

We will be flying home on Friday January 3rd the same day as my parents return.

I planned well with finances but some bumps in the road have come up.  And things are more expensive than I planned in Europe – I think it has to do with this exchange rate.

And I miss home.  Yeah I admit it.  I miss my family, my friends, my stuff (I can’t wait to sleep on my own bed and use my own pillow and use a clothes dryer!  Hanging up all my clothes on drying racks is so overrated.)  Holly and Katie are getting home sick too.

We have had a great time and I’m sorry we won’t get to visit Ireland and Scotland (we were close when we were in Northumberland).  We will be going to Venice at the end of November but I would have liked to seen more of Italy.

 

1 week in Munich

The journey to Munich involved 2 trains and a bus.  I still don’t understand why there is not a train that goes to the central station in Munich.  There is a train that goes from Garmisch to Munich-Pasing, a station on the outskirts of Munich.  And there are subway lines that go from Munich-Pasing to the central station.  If only I was in charge.  The travel to Munich went well.  The bus we took was 2 put together with a connection piece in the middle that enable it to make turns.  I don’t know how anyone could drive something like this.  Maybe Angela or Scott could but I certainly couldn’t!

The owner of the apartment met us here to show us around.  This apartment is a 1 bedroom with a sofa bed.  The rent is higher in Munich like it was in London so for this week we are going to make do.  When we go to Colmar next we will have 2 bedrooms again.  Munich along with most of Europe changed their time back on Sunday October 27th.  So the week we were in Munich we were only 5 hours ahead of everyone back home.

Monday was a beautiful day so we decided to take a bike tour of the city.  The place we are staying is 3 stops away from Hauptbanhof – the central station in Munich.  Here you can switch to almost any line and the regional trains that go all throughout Germany stop here.  We are close to the center of Munich but where we are staying it is like a residential area.  I believe it is close to a University.    From this central station we took a subway to Marienplatz.  This is where the large glockenspiel is located.  Noon is one the times you can watch it go around.  We arrived in time to watch it.  It’s one of those things we did during this trip that only needs to be done once in a lifetime.

The bike tour lasted about 4 hours and took us through parts of the city and through the Englische Garten.  There are parts of the park where clothing is optional for sun bathing and because it was a nice day there were some people enjoying the park.  Our tour guide stopped far enough away.  Thank goodness.  He says it is mostly older German men who enjoy doing this.  Holly and Katie must have been zoning out during this stop because when I asked them about it later they did not know the people sunbathing were nude.  Or so they say!

We stopped at the Chinesischer Turm, a beer garden inside the park.  I had my first beer in a Munich beirgarten.  We also had a huge pretzel and some fries.  Then we went to see the people surfing on the river in the park.  We also rode through the Residenz courtyards and saw the White Church.  You can see why it is named this from the pictures below.  The city is fairly level so the 4 hours of riding was easy.  There was only 1 hill.  It was a great day to be out enjoying Munich.  This was my favorite thing we did in Munich.

   The glockenspiel

 Tower of the Old Town Hall

 This is the white church.  It is not called this because of the outside of the building.

 But you can tell why when you walk inside.

 People surfing the river.

We decided that since we rode through the courtyards of the Residenz we should visit it.  This is the former royal palace of the Bavarian monarchs.  During World War II it was severly damaged.  During the 80s it was rebuilt but the city ran out of money and the last part of the building has a fake facade.  Instead of individual bricks I believe stucco was used and then it was painted to look like bricks.  You can kind of tell in this picture.

On Thursday Neil, Holly & Katie’s dad, came to visit.  He arrived early on Thursday.  He wanted to visit the BMW museum so we took the tour looking at the cars.  Did you know that BMW bought Rolls Royce?  They did so now Rolls Royce are built by BMW.  There are some cool looking cars at the museum.  Old and new.  And they had motorcycles too.  After the museum we had an early dinner at the Hofbrauhaus.  Then we went to see Thor.  Holly really wanted to see this movie when it came out.  She even said she was willing to pay for us to go to an English speaking country to see it.  Luckily we were in a large city for the opening and we were able to find a theater playing it in English!  I am a fan of the Avengers movies.  This one was great.

 Katie and Holly want this car.  You can only fit 2 people into it.  And you open the front to get in.

 The HUGE beer I had at Hofbrauhaus

Friday we went to visit the Dachau concentration camp.  We used a tour guide to go through the camp.  Only those who go through the training provided by Dachau can give tours.  I think it was a good idea using a tour guide.  I only wished that we had more time to look at some of the signs posted around.  It was a very somber experience.  The sorrow I feel for those who experienced this atrocity is great.  Seeing this camp has made my understanding of what others had to go through better.  I can’t imagine going through this and surviving.  I thank God for the life I live and the opportunities I have be given.

 The gate leading into Dachau

 The words on the gate say “work will set you free”  The camp was originally set up as a political prison and the idea was to rehabilitate the prisoners and then release them.  This is part of the propaganda from the Hitler regime.

 This is a memorial created by one of the survivors of the camp showing the bodies of people dying on the electric barbed wire fence.

Our week in Munich ended on a sad experience but it we had a great time.  It was nice to have a visitor and Munich is a fantastic city to visit.

   The views from my living room window this week.  Munich is a city where a lot of people get around by bikes.  They are all over the city.