Colmar is known as the Capitale des vins d'Alsace, the capital of Alsace wines, and can best be described as Alsace in a compressed format. It has everything we love about Alsace. There's wine, cute streets and great restaurants. And a chocolate museum! More on this later. As we pedalled into Colmar on our bikes, we first saw the "modern" parts of town where many houses were plastered and reasonably straight. Already here, however, we fell in love with the cosy town that feels so incredibly French. For example, where else can you find a shop specialising in Panama hats? 🙂
Colmar is an old town, and I mean really old, as it was granted city rights back in the 8th century. Now there are no houses left from that time but in Colmar's old town you will find many houses squatting with weight and age, they lean against each other and are generally crooked and windy, super charming! What's also great about the city is that it's a living city, behind the colourful shutters people actually live and breathe. Sometimes old towns or neighbourhoods can feel like a backdrop for tourists, but not here. It's a small city of around 67,000 inhabitants, so it's easy to get around on foot.
One of the most beautiful neighbourhoods is the one called Little Venice as it has a canal running through it. Of course you can go around by boat in the narrow canals but we chose to use the apostle horses. Just on the edge of Little Venice you will find the large market hall, here you can shop for all kinds of delicacies or just look around and enjoy the lovely atmosphere that large market halls usually have. You can see some pictures of the market hall in the film below.
Choco-Story Colmar
Since I love chocolate, I was overly excited when I found a chocolate museum. Henrik, who quickly realised that if there's chocolate, there's AC, was happy to join me on this incredibly hot summer day. Choco-Story Colmar markets itself as an interactive museum where you can also eat as much chocolate as you want. Even then, I was sold. Exciting things like the fact that they have a chocolate replica of the Statue of Liberty was just a bonus. 🙂
Jokes aside, it was a very interesting and educational museum, we looked around for several hours. The programme was very interactive and started with the discovery of the cacao bean, how it was grown and prepared by the Mayans. The journey continued with the cacao coming to Europe and becoming the fashion in the fine houses in the 17th and 18th centuries. Finally, we landed in the present and got to see the cool Statue of Liberty and other stylish sculptures. Through the museum we competed against each other in everything from chocolate history to pressing cocoa. We also took the beautiful pictures you see above 🙂
Adjacent to the chocolate museum there is also a wine museum, but as we had bought tickets for a champagne museum in Aÿ a few days later, we saved ourselves until then.
By the way, if you're wondering about the connection with the Statue of Liberty, it's because its creator Auguste Bartholdi is from Colmar. His house in the centre of Colmar is now a museum that you can visit if you are interested in his sculptures. Furthermore, there is actually a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty a bit north of town. However, we never had the opportunity to go there.
We stayed at Colmar City Camp which is about three kilometres from the city. From here it was very easy to cycle into the centre without having to think about the car. It was a nice campsite with many funny vehicles, for example a tiny Fiat with a roof tent. 🙂 You can read more about the campsite on our other blog barely steering speed.
We would also like to recommend a restaurant we found, Le Petit Bidon. It is run by a family where the father is in the kitchen while mother and son serve the guests. So charming with all these family-owned businesses. It is wonderful to see how they care for each other within the family and how they include their guests in the family feeling. When we were about to order the food, the mum proudly sent her son forward and explained in a little stumbling English that he was so good at the language. That's nice to see. That I then in an attempt to speak French happened to order one of each on the dessert menu is what happens sometimes. Lucky they only had three. 🙂
If you're not satisfied after three desserts, there are certainly plenty of places in Colmar where you can eat ice-cream by the bucket-load, or why not buy the sweet almond cakes that are so typical of Alsace. Bakeries selling these little delights can be found on almost every street corner.
Join us for a walk through cosy Colmar!
