Colmar

Colmar is a pretty town on the tourist trail half an hour by train south of Strasbourg.  It's 2 main claims to fame are its area of pretty old houses on a small canal and a very fine altar piece in one of its museums. We arrived half and hour after the museum opened to find hoards of people waiting around in their tour groups. We went in and found hoards more already crammed into the space where the altarpiece is on display.   The altar piece was designed for a church in Issenheim but has been sort of deconstructed for display. In its original state there was a backing sort of sculpture, then you could close one set of doors with interesting paintings on them, then you could close another set of doors with more paintings.  There were some seats in front of the different sections.  However, there was no organisation and some of the tour group leaders just pushed their way in, with their entourages, blocking peoples view. Groups of closely packed people make me anxious at the best of times, and on this occassion the rudeness of some people made me quite annoyed. We left that room and were standing in the covered arcade part of the cloister looking at a headstone when a group came along. We stood our ground, as I felt we had a right to, and most of them walked  between us and the stone headstone, following their guide who could easily have changed her route a little and walked around us. Then anotheer group came along. We deliberately stood there to see what would happen. They wee a better behaved group. Some actually said 'excuse me' as they walked between us and the headstone. Others deliberately waked around us.   I accept that tours have a place in this world, but bad manners and herd behaviour do not.

We gave up on that game and wandered around the rest of the museum for quite a while. The displays were interesting, but it was very hard to understand the map and find which rooms were where. We wandered past the room with the altarpiece in it at about 12 nd there were only a few people, definitely no groups.  So we stayed a while in peace and quiet.

We thought 'lunch time' went outside and found where all the groups were - sitting in the restaurants. I have learnt a thing or 2 over the past month and walked for a bit looking down the alleys until we came, fairly quickly, to a nice place with few other people down an alley.

We then walked to the pretty area, Little Venice, which was quaint. Then came back here. Both Noel and I were very tired.