FRANCE in 4K: Fairy Tale Colmar Virtual City Tour - City Walks for Treadmill Scenery

Hello walkers and welcome back to City Walks, the channel where I will walk you around and show you interesting places, interesting little details of the cities, and occasionally a nature walk. Obviously today we are in a city, and a very interesting city, in a lot of ways. I'm going to tell you first about how we got here and then I will get into a little bit of the city, but honestly I'm not even close to an expert in this place, so I won't speak too much. I'm not planning to, but then I never am. It is currently, trying to look this up, 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 21 degrees Celsius, and about 12 30 p.m. on a Sunday in May, late May. We are in Colmar, France, and it is, well I'm going to get to that in a minute. We were hoping to take a quick train here and then on to Strasbourg, but the train broke down. We have our bikes with us, we were trying to, we met a nice Australian couple, it was also biking, we had to get the bikes off by taking them all the way through the train to the front, and then out that way, and then we were going to go back for our baggage, and then wait, and then get onto a train that was much smaller, much more crowded, and look at these awesome, I guess they're onion, some sort of onion, and then stand for two stops until we got here. So it was a bit of a minor ordeal, but then we got here, and look, Colmar, I was telling my son, might be one of the most ridiculously unbelievable places I've ever seen, and the reason I say that, and I think you'll get an idea of that as we go along here, is not because it's a ridiculous place, but because it's so hard to believe, I'm going to cut down this way, that this isn't some ersatz Disney-fied theme park that was built in the 60s to entertain the tourists. This is like real, this is like real, sound like a like a young person. These houses have been here for hundreds and hundreds of years, and just blows my mind how much of it, it just keeps going, these these French cities, man, they just keep going with their amazing architecture and houses and stuff, and it's fantastic. I want to thank our Patreon supporters real quick for your contributions to make these trips possible, these walks possible. If you want to learn how to do a one-time donation or subscribe via Patreon, there's some info in the description below. Thanks to the one-time supporters as well. Now I like to talk about finding little details. I love this. I think that's actually, could be metal, I think it might be metal, could be stone, and then some wood, woodwork. Look how that, and that's of course not really medieval, but it's pretty, look at this, like every corner, and because it's been preserved, because it was, it's in Alsace, Alsace-Lorraine, and it's been bypassed by a lot of the wars. It has preserved, much like Bruges in Belgium, it has preserved a lot of its old buildings and architecture. A ton of churches here, big churches too, just kind of neat. I mean you get a crick in your neck from just checking all this stuff out. If you've been to Colmar, or if I've gotten anything wrong, or you have any memories, or anything like that, connections, please let me know in the comment section of the YouTube video. I love that. I love interacting with you guys, and I specified the YouTube video because a lot of these videos also live on citywalksvirtualtours.com, the website where you can find, search for walks by location in London. Let's take a look at some of the store windows. I know like some of you guys like to see that. There's some really pretty jewelry here. Because it's such a pristine, well-preserved place, it's very popular with tourists like myself, and you can see that in the crowds here. Look, there's another view of that church. Oh, look at that roof too. It is a Sunday, so services are going on, so I probably won't go into any of the churches like I've been trying to do recently. Tons of cafes, tons of little tchotchkes, hotels, etc. I do want to go back and say one thing real quick. So I was talking about the, the, I'll get back to that, because there's a, I think, there's a little canal. One of the things the city's known for is its canals. There's even a little section called Little Venice. You can take a little boat tour. This is more like a drainage ditch than a canal, honestly, but it's kind of nice to have it through the city. So I was talking about the, quote-unquote, ordeal, minor ordeal of the trains, and yes, it was definitely inconvenient, but the people on the train were very helpful. Everybody was sort of helping each other. They helped us with our bikes and bags, and it was very cooperative thing, which was pretty cool, I think. This is where I get a little turned around, because I don't really know where I'm going. I'm just following my, my interests, so to speak. This guy is, duck back through here. I think we're getting towards the edge of it, but we'll loop back if that's the case. This looks like perhaps a private event. I'm going to flip you around real quick, because I've got a little thing to spiel that I do. Hi there, my name is Henry. I'll be your proxy walker today, your virtual travel guide and co-discoverer. And the co-discoverer is the main, main thing there, because we're finding these little nooks and crannies together, and I enjoy that part of the tour guiding process. Spinning around. Nope, we are on the edge. Here's another, another bit of it. Looks like maybe a market. It's tempting to follow the crowds. Here's another canal. Here's another sign that it's a heavily tourist area. There's these little tourist trains. There's several of them running around today, which I've actually been on, not here, but in other places, and they can be kind of fun. There is a lot of value to taking a guided tour of some sort. I think this might be the little Venice area. How crazy this is. Somewhere around here is also a reduced scale model of the Statue of Liberty, because I believe the designer of the Statue of Liberty was from here. Look at all these red locks. It's almost like an official. They have kind of an interesting design of these half-timbered houses too. They were the stucco kind of bulges out. I haven't seen that before. When I pass somebody like that, I try to give them a little, little money for sharing. The Loch is a river that goes through here. It's actually kind of a canal. This must be the petite Venice area. I think part of the reason that it's unbelievable, and this idea that it's a theme park vibe without actually being a theme park, is that there are so many people here. Normally, I like to call out road signs, street signs that let you follow along. Honestly, I haven't seen any, and there's so many little warrens and streets. Here's the boats you can take tours in. I've seen several. We saw several go by when we got here. There's some carp of some sort down in there. Everybody getting their Instagram moment here. It is beautiful. It's a little crazy to think people are driving around in this city with all these narrow roads of some sort. Oh, there's flowers. Oh, the flowers smell delightful. Rue du Lycée, if that helps anybody. This is sort of the newer town. All of a sudden, I'm hearing a lot more American voices, which I think jibes well with being a tourist center. Makes sense to hear more foreign voices, non-French voices, I guess. All right, let's go back into, oh wait, hold on. I just want to show you the sign. National School of Music, City of Colmar. It's so, I don't want to say it's quite what the British would call twee, but it is close. It's just so hard to imagine that this is, it's like a storybook town almost, that it actually exists and is a real lived-in place. Nice little garden over here. Love these interesting little scooters with the two front wheels. Look, I love these giant vines. I've seen these a lot here. Not just here, but in France. And they're trained all along the buildings and over as archways, over gates. And I think they might be wisteria. At least they were further along the wall. Over the door, good working design there. Look at this corner a bit, a button under. I'm not sure what to call that. I like it though. I want to go this way too. Rue Schongauer. Flowers, I think these might be fake flowers. I think the fact that everything is maintained, painted, it's not a lot of stuff falling down. Look at the bookstore. Oh, I like that big glass window. Excusez-moi, pardon. Regional specialties, I guess. I think off to the left there's, we saw some people getting their wedding photos taken in the park and I think a little bit of the wedding party is off to the left maybe. Cheese shop. I'm gonna duck back in here real quick, sorry. Private property, so leave that be. Sorry, this is a cheese shop. It's closed for lunch. Look at those giant wheels of cheese in there. We have some friends, the World Towners, a great channel, travel channel. And Jessica loves cheese. They lived in France for at least a year, maybe two, down in the south. She's always raving about good cheeses. Cut right here if I can get, I'm always amazed at how Europeans are able to drive in these streets and park in these streets. They are incredibly skillful at it. This is what I mean, it just keeps going and going, the city. It's amazing to me. Getting a couple raindrops there. These flowers, I think they're artificial, but still so much color. There's a bit of a canal. I'm not sure the difference between a canal and a sewer. I think that's a canal. We'll call it a canal just for, oh, look at this glass stuff. Really cool. Oh, look at that. Private party maybe. People know each other anyway. Oh, kitty cat. I'm pretty easily distracted. If you've watched this channel for long, you know that. This, that's pretty cool. I don't think kitty really wants to be bothered, but I do like kitties. Hey, kitty kitty. I think we're on the edge of the old town again. We rode our bikes in from the train station, which isn't that far, and they had a couple lovely parks on the way in, too. They do enjoy their parks here, and I am glad of it. We'll go down one more block. Lots of ice cream shops here, a couple of cupperies. You can get waffles in a lot of places, a sort of Belgian-style waffle with chocolate or fruit or whatever on there, caramel. Rue des Clefs. Maybe it goes on for a bit, but we're going to make a left here. Eight euros to ride the train for adults, six for children. Martyrs of the Resistance. Okay, and we have arrived back where we started. I want to thank you guys for joining us today on this walk through a chunk of Colmar, anyway. I'm going to show you our bikes that we're riding across France, or have finished actually riding across France. Finished yesterday. Loaded up and trucking. Anyway, thank you very much. I'm going to do a walk in Strasbourg, at least that's the plan, and I hope you'll join me for that. Check out our other walks in France on the website or further on the channel, and mainly come on back soon. Until then, keep on stepping.