1 August - Design Day, and a Leaping Deer

When I went through Architecture School from 1978 to 1981, Le Corbusier's Chapelle du Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp was always lauded as one of the world's iconic works of modern architecture. High on the list too were chairs by Le Corbusier, Eames, Breuer, Aalto, Rietveld, Macintosh and others. We've managed to see a few of the furniture pieces over the years, even some copies at Nood NZ's stores, but it's been 40 years since I first knew of Ronchamp and I've wanted to see it ever since. I've finally managed it, and it was well worth the long wait.

We set off for the day of design early, as we had three stops to make - the chapel, the Cité du Train at Mulhouse, and the Vitra Design Museum just over the German border.

The first great excitement was none of these. Those who travel in Europe will be well-used to the "leaping deer" road signs. They get ignored, as everyone knows that that leaping deer are even more rare than unicorns, and you will never ever see one. I imagine we've done over 50,000km in Europe, and until today neither a leaping deer, nor a unicorn, to be seen. There we were with Karen behind the wheel, when a deer leapt (yes, actually leapt) over the guard rail, skittered in our lane for a moment until it regained grip on the hard road surface, and then shot across the road in front of us. It was very close to losing grip and falling, and within a second of being run over by us.

Chapelle de Notre Dame du Haut, Le Corbusier 1955

Excitement over, we arrived at Ronchamp before the chapel opened at 9am. From below, the chapel looked like it might be a little overwhelmed by trees and other buildings since added below it, but on walking up the hill to its crest, the chapel was revealed in all its beauty. It's really a staggering building. Simple but also very rich. I can't think of another building anywhere like it. We were a little disappointed to see that it isn't in the best of shape, with the white paint inside and out looking grubby, and concrete spalling here and there.

Interior

Beautiful coloured glass windows

None of this took away from what is a fabulous piece of architecture, well living up to the massive reputation that it has built up. We were both stunned by how beautiful both the inside and outside were, and what a lovely space was created inside. It was also much larger than 40 years of memory said it should have been.

Having had our fill, we headed back west for France's and supposedly Europe's premier railway museum, the SNCF's Cite du Train just north of Mulhouse. Our visit didn't start well with an app that was supposed to guide us around unable to be loaded because of the non-working free wifi. Very frustrating, especially as the counter staff had specifically pointed out its availability to us.

Cite du Train, Mulhouse

The site consists mostly of several huge train sheds absolutely chocka full of, unsurprisingly, trains. Steam trains, diesel trains, electric trains. Ordinary carriages, war carriages and Orient Express Wagon-Lits carriages. All very well cared-for and interesting, and it would have been easy to spend an entire day there, either if the app was working, or if you were French and could understand all the many audiovisual add-ons, or of course if you were a full-on train buff. We did enjoy it, and found a lot of interest. The Orient Express is on my bucket-list, and it was lovely to see some of the older carriages as they were back in its glory days.

Orient Express carriage

The highlight of the day was however the Vitra Campus. Vitra is a Swiss company which makes high-end design products, particularly chairs. They have a campus at Weil-am-Rhein just over the German border which has factory buildings, a store, several short-term display galleries and a collection and museum of chairs, lighting and furniture. What sets it apart from most industrial campuses is that all the buildings were designed by world-leading architects, such as Frank Gehry. Most buildings are open and able to be visited. It was very amusing to see the fields in front of the cafe covered with little groups of designer chairs.

Vitra House, headquarters of the Design Museum campus

A Frank Gehry exhibition building

Designer chairs randomly scattered outside the onsite cafe

We'd gone mainly to see the chair collection, but we started with a very expensive and not very good coffee - twice the cost of an average French coffee - then had a look through the store. We got a couple of small things, and a couple of books. I would have loved some of the perfect 1/10th scale miniature chairs they make, but with prices ranging from 100E to 990E, we thought not!

Design store at Vitra

Hand-size miniatures - about 250,000 Euros worth here alone!

The chair exhibition was fabulous. All the chairs I knew about from Architecture School and since, many in some variations, and of course many more by the same and other designers.

Inside of the Schaudepot chair collection

Some of the chairs displayed on big racks

Marc Newson's Lockheed Lounge chair - a 1/10th model costs 960E

Karen and I spent a good 2 hours enjoying the amazing designs before exiting into the hot day and heading back to Colmar. I'd known about Vitra's Design Museum for years, and had always wanted to go, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. So nice that a private company is prepared to be generous with its assets.

31 July - Walk above Le Bonhomme, Auberge meal and Munster cheese

It always surprises us that almost every new walk seems to have a very different feel to anything else we've done, or some type of sight we've never seen before. Our loop walk above the village of Le Bonhomme in the Vosges was yet another set of new experiences. We managed a really good early start - midday temperatures above 30C are a good incentive.

It was a 40-minute trip to the start of our walk. An enjoyable drive up one of the numerous valleys that head up through the foothills of the Vosges Range, to a little village called Le Bonhomme (the good man). Our hike was expected to take us 3 hours, to allow us to get to a ferme auberge (farm inn) we had found out about a bit further down the valley. It was a solid hike up a steep sealed road for the first few km, then a track took over, taking us through forest the entire rest of the way..

Tiny German cemetery at the start of the walk

Lovely tracks

From researching the track beforehand, we knew we would come across a military cemetery and a few other points of interest, but we hadn't reckoned on finding, near and on the crest of the hill, an extensive array of pillboxes, barbed wire and metal barriers laid out along the landscape, bomb craters, buildings for pumping water, remnants of a funicular and similar ruins, all left over from the First World War.

This side of the Vosges had been German from the 1870s. It was a high point in the Vosges Mountains and thus strategic during WWI. The French had moved across the then-border from the west, and managed to claim the high ground in the Vosges. Battles were fought at the 1219m Tete des Faux peak, with fighting along the whole Vosges front killing some 17,000 French and German soldiers. The French and German lines were as little as 30 metres apart. Coming back down the trail towards the west, evidence of French trenches and mortar craters was all too clear. We walked down a rock-covered mule track used to supply the French positions.

French WWI trenches

We haven't been anywhere before where the evidence of conflict was quite so obvious and personal. It was rather sobering. Final stop was a French military cemetery, rather beautiful beneath the trees and very well-tended. All up, a most interesting walk.

French cemetery

We did it all quite quickly in order to get to the ferme auberge not too long after 12pm. These are farm-based inns where you can stay, get a good solid farm meal, or both. We'd been recommended to visit one and try a lunch. We'd picked the Auberge du Kebespre for our lunch visit, and we arrived dead on noon and sat ourselves down. The menu was very hearty - entrees of pie or jambon cru (cured pork), mains of wild boar stew or sliced roast smoked ham. We ven has spaetzle, a strange thick pasta squeezed through a coarse sieve direct into the hot water. It was all rather good, though not entirely appropriate for 34 degrees. We managed to work our way through the menu, to stagger out 2 hours later, well stuffed. In fact so well stuffed we didn't want anything for dinner at all, and were still not hungry by breakfast the following day!

The Ferme Auberge de Kenepre

The Vosges

On the way back we visited the Munster cheese factory of Fromagerie Haxaire. Munster is one of the smelliest French cheeses and has a distinctive sticky orange rind. Unfortunately we were too late in the day to see the process of making it, but we were able to taste various versions. We can assure you that Haxaire's Munster Fermier is seriously strong. Most Munsters have a relatively mild taste, at least compared to their odour, but the Fermier was properly powerful! I bought an ordinary Munster, as I couldn't bring myself to get the full Fermier version.

Back to our very hot apartment about 5pm to relax for a little.

29th and 30th July - Ribeauville and Colmar town walks

Saturday and we were up bright and early to try and beat the heat of the day. All our hiking gear was ready, and we were off in the car soon after 8am. It was only a 25-minute drive to the little village, Ribeauville, where our planned walk kicked off from. Strung all over the rolling country at the foothills of the Vosges Range were thousands of hectares totally developed for vineyards. The famous Alsace wines come from this region. Nestled along the foothills are a raft of little villages, all extremely quaint, picturesque and gorgeous to visit. Ribeauville is one of these villages. Indeed, as we started our hike by walking up the main street, it was mind-blowing how pretty it was. 

Alsace wine country - vineyards with pretty little villages

The 3 Chateaux in the distance

The first of the chateaux from Ribeauville's main street

As always, we soon turned off onto a steep side-track. The path afforded us some great views of the vineyards and scattered villages as we gained height. After an hour we arrived at the first of three chateaus we'd encounter on route. All three chateaux are in ruins, and date from the 12th-14th centuries. We are continually wowed by the age of stuff that we come across. NZ is a beautiful country, but it doesn't have anything that equates to poring over the ruins of castles that are 800 years old, or into a monastery that has been lived in by monks for centuries.

Two of the castles, set above white wine vineyards

Ribeaupierre Castle (Saint Ulrich Castle)

Our track

Pelerinage Notre Dame de Dusenbach

We really enjoyed the walk, which by and large was through trees so we didn't find the heat (still daily highs of 34C) too bad. Arriving back at the car a bit before lunch, we opted to flag getting a beer or coffee and instead drove straight home to have a lunch of cold salad. We had similar for dinner because it was just too hot to think about eating potato and meat or sausage, the typical fare on offer at eating places here. The influence of Germany is extremely obvious, in Colmar's food as well as its architecture.

Perfect name for a winegrower!

Everyone here is commenting on how hot it is. Our hosts, both father and son, who let us into this apartment, said it has been seriously hot. Everyone seems to be suffering from it - all over Europe in fact. We saw that the forecast for Ceret is 38 degrees for four days in a row this week! It's 41 degrees in Japan and thousands are conking out, mostly older folk. It is definitely taking its toll on us too. 

The sculptor of the Statue of Liberty was from Colmar

Sunday - feeling pretty wiped out, we decided today would be a quieter day, to catch up on ourselves, the blog, cope with the heat and enjoy a nice meal out. After Skyping with Bella first thing, and catching up with all her family news, we set off on the 2-hour walk around Colmar. Self-guided walks, typically using a map from the tourist office, can often be disappointing, but not so in this case. The town is fascinating. It is not as 'chocolate-boxy' as the little villages set along the foothills nearby, but it has tons of character in its old buildings, cobbled streets, whimsical wrought-iron signs hanging above the shops, flowerboxes, the 'little Venice' canal that you can take short rides on, and the web of streets and alleys winding around the ancient churches and public buildings. The earliest buildings date back to the early 13th century, but there are plenty built in the 13th and 14th centuries. The architecture is very pretty, being half-timbered and plaster, and painted in a variety of colours and kept in very good order.

The House of Heads

Famous painting in the cathedral

The oldest houses in Colmar - c1350!

Little Venice, Colmar

Houses, Colmar

It was a lot of fun wandering around, spotting all the items on the tour sheet. There are plenty of tourists here. In fact this is the first place this trip where we have really coincided with them. We've been surprised by how few we have seen over the last few weeks, and a number of the residents we had spoken to in various places along our trip told us that they seem to be very thin on the ground so far this holiday season. It was quite fun being in amongst all the colour and movement of lots of people, who were equally enjoying the charms of Colmar, but we didn't think we would want to live here. 

A selection of the gorgeous signs of Colmar

27th & 28th July - To Besancon via Perouges, La Musee de la Foret, the Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, Colmar

From Grenoble we headed north to the very mediaeval small village of Perouges. It was particularly mediaeval-feeling. 

Entry gate into Perouge

From there the next stop was the Musee de la Foret at Courtes. This proved to be most interesting. It was a fully preserved Ain farm, filled with tools and equipment from pre-industrial times. It was obviously run by a local preservation society, and all the better for the slightly amateur feel. We loved the big living room, with a central open fire-pit surrounded by chairs and the rest of the living quarters.

The main farmhouse

Huge living area

Final pause for the day was at the Unesco-rated 1774 Royal Saltworks of Arcs-et-Senans. These were a huge facility for making salt from natural underground brine and had been set up by the architect Ledoux for King Louis XV. It was a very early version of a complete new town, with industrial and living quarters for the many workers and their families. It was fiercely hot, and we would have loved to be able to walk for longer around the lovely gardens, but simply couldn't. We were very impressed by Ledoux's vision - his ideas for both the saltworks, and for many other projects shown in an excellent display, were centuries ahead of their time.

The huge semi-circular courtyard at the Saltworks

The exhibitions and the audio guide were another prime example of Frenchness. Both were terribly academic and no doubt accurate, but about things that were not relevant for the vast majority of visitors. We have architectural and town planning backgrounds, but it was far too much even for us. We both felt disappointed by how little was given about the processes of making the salt, the lives of the workers and so on, but were overwhelmed with somewhat irrelevant and repeated descriptions of Doric columns and oculi. We would have loved to seen some big piles of salt, hefted a salt shovel and tasted some brine, but it wasn't to be. It was great, but could have been even better.

We had just one night in Besancon, but due to a late checkout from our Airbnb we were able to spend all of Friday morning wandering around the Old Quarter. Our research before the trip had highlighted a Museum of Time, so that was our first target. We were to learn that Besancon was the heart of clock and watch making in France, and was a large part of the town, right from its very early origins centuries ago. At one point in the early 1900s it had a huge clock- and watch-making university!

Musee de Temps, Besancon

The Leroy 01, a record-breaking 24-complication watch, Besancon Musee de Temps

Besancon began as a walled town, encircled on three sides by the loop of the River Doubs. It's now a small city, densely developed in the Old Quarter but with surprisingly wide streets and a lovely atmosphere. The cathedral was rather nice, but we arrived dead on the hour so missed out on a tour of its special astronomical clock tour which had started at 10 minutes to.

Besancon has lovely wide streets and attractive buildings

The Porte Noir, Roman-built in 146AD

Leaving at 1:30pm gave us 2hr 30 for our trip to Colmar, in time to meet our next host at 4pm. The host's father let us in first, a lovely man, soon joined by his son. The apartment was lovely and proved to be a great base to explore Alsace for a week.

24 to 26 July - La Ferme Durand walk, time in Grenoble

Our walk on Tuesday to La Ferme Durand didn't quite do it for us - it was a bit too short, not too much in variation of landscape and vegetation, and limited views over Grenoble and the Alps (though the latter was due to cloud coming over). Before we left on our trip we spent many afternoons sifting through the vast number of walks in each location we are stopping at. We'd narrowed them down to perhaps 2-4 in each place, with achieving them actually dependent on what the weather turned out to be on the day, how we felt etc. This was the first one that wasn't excellent, so we've done very well until now.

Hence, we relooked at the other options we had short-listed for Grenoble, and unfortunately found may were too far out of the city. We are doing enough driving as it is, and didn't fancy driving for perhaps an hour to get to the start of a walk, even though that might be only a distance of perhaps 15km, such is the nature of the winding roads on the sides of the mountainsides here. For this walk we chose a track only 20 minutes driving away, set on the mountain on the opposite side of Grenoble to our previous walk. The route information indicated it was just under 10km long and would take 4 hours to circumnavigate the route, which including gaining an ultimate height of 850m.

This time we got a bit more than we bargained for. It was a very solid steady climb up and a very solid steady descent. The view at the top was unfortunately limited because of trees beside the track most of the way, though the track passed through lovely forest. A multitude of paths criss-crossed the forest so we were very thankful for John's GPS-ed route on his phone. However, in the end we discovered we walked 10.6km, including 1373m uphill and 1373m downhill. We'd walked 3000m up and 3000m down again on one of the walks last week in Die, but this one was much harder because it was so steep and the footing a little loose.

Beside the first part of the ascent - a rapidly dropping creekbed at the base of the bluff

Very steep

Even steeper

View looking NW of Grenoble.

View of the mountains opposite.

Needless to say, we were pleased to have done a good hard walk, it was after all what we wanted to do while we were here, but by the time we reached the car at 12:30pm, in 33 degree heat, we were feeling pretty knackered. Our knees and quads were a little shaky after such a rugged descent.

Since we were part of the way out of the city, we considered continuing another 15km to have a look around a Chartreuse distillery (compulsory tasting!), but decided we were too stuffed, and didn't want to have to do any more driving than necessary. So, it was straight back to the city, our carpark and the cafe nearby to enjoy a hard-earned coffee and sit-down.

A quiet afternoon was in order, updating the blog, washing and other bits and pieces. Because the wifi wasn't working when we arrived, and it took 3 days for the host to sort it out, we had quite a bit of backlog on the blog, plus skyping, emails and bits and pieces to sort out.

Two relatively laid-back days followed. The weather was so hot we didn't feel like getting out and mixing with the sun. We did however track down the nearest swimming pool on the Friday, and enjoyed an hour swimming up and down the 50 metre pool. It was an amazing complex, outdoor and surrounded on all sides by lovely old multi-storied residential buildings. It was one of the most amazing settings we have swum in.

Piscine Jean Bron, Grenoble

We did manage an excellent Cambodian meal one evening at the Phnom Penh after a slightly frustrating time walking ages in the heat to a Thai place, only to find it unaccountably closed, not an unusual occurrence. We do appreciate fresh crunchy vegetables, and the Cambodian cold starter salads were superb. Another fun visit was a beer at La Table Ronde, a cafe established in 1739.

Our rather nice Airbnb apartment