After a sleepless night we were up early to clean the apartment before we headed back to Strasbourg, Gerald arrived at the pre-determined time of 9:00am, he was happy with what he saw so we made our good-byes and took the mist direct route back to Colmar, 45 minutes away. The weather was still bad with cloud down on the surface of the road (otherwise known as fog) across the higher parts which reached up to 1200m. A slow drive down the foggy mountain on a wet and slippery road courtesy of a cautious Dacia driver suited me just fine. But not so the Audi driver in my boot. At the first chance that came along I pulled over to let her past so she could go and park in the boot of the Dacia. The Dacia driver and I got the last last laugh when a great big school bus pulled out onto the road and slowed everyone down to school bus pace.
After Munster the road flattened out and we all got past the bus and before long we reached the autoroute to Colmar. In Colmar we set our sights and GPS-girl for the car-park under Parc de Champs du Mars where we’d been on Friday. Colmar’s old town is very pretty and characteristic of historic towns of the Alsace who are proud to show off their Middle Ages and Renaissance heritage. Not unlike Strasbourg, Colmar is divided by numerous little canals and streams that all eventually flow into the Rhine. The Muhlbach flows through the middle of the old town creating a lovely setting for tourists to enjoy. Of course having anything that resembles a canal gives a town the right to declare that it has a Little Venice. With some directions form the Office of Tourism about where to buy a stamp (any TABAC, when you’re next in France) and getting one we wandered down to Colmar’s Little Venice. Amongst the cobble-stoned lanes we found a cafe in a small square with a lovely, shady Elm tree in the middle and sat and watched the world pass by over a coffee. The streets were not very busy at 11:00am this morning. Many of the shops were yet to open for the day. After coffee we wandered down to La Lauch, the canal into which Muhlbach flows. Most of the buildings are that classic “half-wooden” style so prevalent in this part of Europe. You know, the one you see in all the travel brochures. Some people in a vessel that loosely resembled a gondola were proceeding along La Lauch, one of the large canals. The “gondolier” could not have been less interested, texting on his mobile phone in one hand while holding the tiller of his little outboard in the other. A little way past the “gondolier” we found a small fountain in the middle of a roundabout created by Colmar’s favourite son Auguste Batholdi to honour two other favourite sons. The fountain is topped by a statue of the 13th century deposed and exiled provost of Colmar, Jean Roesselmann, who returned to defend his city against the forces of the Bishop of Strasbourg at the cost of his life. What’s unique about the statue is that the face is that of Hercule Jean-Baptiste de Peyerimhoff, the major of Colmar who was forced to resign his post after he fought against the annexation of Alsace as a Prussian territory following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871.
Back to the car park we walked and then on to Strasbourg. The car needed to be filled so we took a detour through the town of Geispolsheim but without any luck. No petrol stations on the main street here. A few kilometres later we pulled off the autoroute at a petrol station to find that it was unmanned – card only to start the pump. After our experience with that system in Austria I didn’t trust it so we moved on, still no fuel. The tank was still half full but we had to fill it before we returned it. No more opportunities presented themselves before we got to the Strasbourg ring-road. The best effort of GPS-girl to get us to the Sixt office at the Strasbourg station were once again thwarted by barriers on the autoroute exit we needed to use. Thirty minutes and a lot of angst later we got the the station, but still needed to fill up so we drove on by. 500M further down the road we found a manned petrol station, filled up, then reset GPS-girl again for our destination. After working our way around our last road barricade we finally and thankfully pulled into the Sixt drop-off garage. Hoo-bloody-ray!
The chap on duty was very courteous and helpful and didn’t give us any grief about the damage to the car. He just did his job. We dropped into the office to make sure they understood what had transpired yesterday and they were the same. They just did their job and assured us that because we’d take out an extra level of insurance there would be no excess to pay. On that point, the chap in Split had convinced us to take out what they call “Smart Protection” which reduced any excess payable on any damage incurred to €0.00. Since then, we’ve done it for each of the subsequent rentals. It’s not cheap, increasing the rental cost by about 60%, but it’s been a good investment as it turned out.
What an eventful couple of days with your car. Lucky you were able to return it without any grief from the rental company. A good advertisement for customer service, I’d say. Love the photos, very quaint looking towns.
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