We arrived in Colmar on Friday, January 3rd. This city is known for its beautiful coloured half-timbered houses but is also the city of Bartholdi who made the "Statue of Liberty".
With the Christmas lights everywhere we decided to wander in the narrow streets of the city. We could see water everywhere. There is even a small place called 'Little Venice" which is really romantic. It's where we decided to eat for the evening. We had supper at "Le Comptoir de Georges" (http://le-comptoir-de-georges.fr/) which is first a butchery but they have seats in the back. They have a lot of local dishes. They don't look for fancy things but the food was excellent. Afterwards we went to our hotel "Les maraichers" (http://www.les-maraichers.com/) which is alright for a one night stop and has a diversified continental breakfast.
On Saturday we had rain and wind which wasn't the best start for our mountaineering training. There wasn't any snow under 1100m. The Vosges aren't really high with its highest peak at about 1500m. However with the little snow we had we could already start doing our "Snow corridors". It's really fun to walk around with ice axes and studs. After our activities wad had a well deserved rest at the refuge "Refuge des Trois fours" (http://chaletrefuge3fours.ffcam.fr/) where we had a warm welcome. The food was excellent and the ambience was friendly and everybody was telling his day.
On Sunday we woke up early to be able to enjoy the day. At our surprise it snowed all night and cheered us up for our next activities. We went back to the summit of the Hohneck where next to the snow that was falling we had the wind blowing really hard. This didn't of course stop us and we all had a wonderful time.
