Every great tour needs a moment where the pace changes completely. For Fairways & Frontlines, that moment is Colmar.
Colmar sits in the Alsace region of eastern France, near the German border. Its old town is UNESCO-listed, with half-timbered houses in pastel colours lining narrow canals, the area known as “Petite Venise.” The Maison des Têtes (House of Heads) has 106 sculpted faces on its facade. The Tanners’ Quarter is a photographer’s dream.
And the food. Alsace has a culinary tradition that blends French technique with Germanic heartiness. Tarte flambée (a thin-crust pizza-like dish with crème fraîche, onions, and lardons), choucroute garnie (sauerkraut with an assortment of meats), and Kugelhopf (a sweet Alsatian cake). The wine is exceptional too: Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Pinot Gris from vineyards just outside town.
We arrive in Colmar after a scenic 2.5-hour drive from Verdun through the Vosges foothills. It’s Day 9, and the tour has spent a week on battlefields, memorials, and northern French golf courses. The emotional weight has been significant. Colmar is the exhale.
There’s no golf here. No memorials. Just a beautiful town, a great hotel in the Grand Hôtel Bristol, a walking tour of the old town, and dinner at a traditional winstub, an Alsatian bistro where the locals eat.
The practical reason for the stop is equally important: it breaks the Verdun-to-Evian journey into two manageable drives instead of one long slog. But the experiential reason is what matters. After the intensity of Verdun, Fromelles, and Pozières, you need a town that looks like a postcard and serves you tarte flambée with a glass of Riesling.
The next morning, the coach heads south through Basel and along the shore of Lake Geneva to Evian-les-Bains. But for one evening, Colmar is the star.