Monday, October 6, 2025
Switzerland 2025 - Colmar, France and Chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg
We had visited Colmar once before as a day trip from our Rhine River cruise in
2013 and decided to take a trip over the border to France to visit this lovely
city once again. We stayed in a historic hotel, part of the Relais and Chateaux
group, called La Maison des Tetes which literally means the house of heads. Now
you may be envisioning some scary place but the "heads" are just sculpted heads
decorating the front of the building. Every day the city walking tours would
stop to admire the hotel facade. The hotel is located in the pedestrian zone and
near all the historic sites including "Little Venice". Since we had previously
visited the Unterlinden museum with the famous Isenheim altarpiece as well as
other sites, we just wandered the streets looking in shop windows, strolled
through Little Venice and the covered marketplace. The one thing we didn't do was
to visit the Bartholdi museum and I'm a bit sorry we didn't see it. The weather
was rainy and cold and I was glad to find a Starbucks nearby for a nice hot
latte.
We drove from Colmar to visit the Chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg the next
day. It had been raining earlier and we actually drove up into the clouds
surrounding the castle. When we walked up to the castle entrance we couldn't see
more than the gate in front of us due to the cloud cover hanging over the
castle. We never let that kind of thing keep us from enjoying a visit and it
actually was rather a cool atmospere. Once inside we saw a drawbridge, a tower
staircase, lots of weaponry including several cannon, colorful wall murals, and
lots of ceramic stoves. I always think these ceramic heating stoves were a great
idea and how much warmth it would give the room, you just would have to be super
careful that no one touched it! After our castle visit we returned to Colmar via
country roads through vineyards, farmland, and small villages.
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