The plot thickens

We said goodbye to Lucerne and boarded the train for Mulhouse, France.  

This interesting sculpture was in Basel, Switzerland where we changed trains.

The train ride was a short trip of about two hours.

Our hotel in Mulhouse was a bit further away from the train station than I usually book and walking there, I was worried that it wasn’t going to be ideal for this leg of the trip.  It was just a bit “off the beaten path” and somewhat quirky and nondescript, but it worked out very well for us overall.  Whew! 

Our room wasn’t “roomy” -but otherwise nice enough.  We checked in around 2:00 and got an immediate reminder of French dining “rules”.  When I started to look for a place for lunch, I realized that they were all closing soon and wouldn’t reopen for dinner hours until around 7:00 PM.  We had to invoke emergency  “grocery store lunch” protocols!  

I took a couple of pictures on the way to the grocery store.  

Lunch:

As the day was already winding down by then, we just chilled out in the room on our first evening.

I’d looked up a self-walking tour for the town for our first day in Mulhouse.   The one I found really only highlighted a few points of interest, even though the city does have its share of history.

Located in the Eastern part France, Mulhouse is in the Alsace region of France and is very close to both the Swiss and German borders.  The first written records of the town are from the 1100s.  From 1354 to 1515, it was part of the Alsatian county of Sundgau, which was under the control of the Holy Roman Empire.  In 1515, the city joined the Swiss Confederation. In January of 1798, the citizens voted to join France – The Treaty of Mulhouse.  That was short-lived because as history unfolded, various wars had Mulhouse changing hands multiple times between the French and the Germans.  France had the final say around the end of WWII.  

Our first stop was just a block or so from our hotel.  It is what remains of the original city walls, which they call the Bollwerk Tower.  It is estimated to be about 630 years old.  Original fortifications were started as long as 800 years ago. By the 1800’s there wasn’t much left of these original city walls.

Next, we walked toward the plaza where the church and city hall are located.  On the way we caught a glimpse of the church.

Arriving at the plaza.

The city hall was designated a historic monument by the French Government in 1929.  It isn’t a surprise to me that the city hall looks a bit more German or Swiss considering Mulhouse’s history.

The church is called Temple Saint-Etienne.  The first church on this site was consecrated in 1186.  In 1523, Mulhouse became a protestant town and the Catholic faith was prohibited.  In the mid-1800s, the city council decided to build a new church -the one we saw.

We took all sorts of pictures:

To the left side of the church, we saw this.

There wasn’t anything there that helped explain what it was exactly, but we could see very faint indications that it might have something to do with putting a shadow on the pole during the equinoxes.

At the edge of the plaza was a carousel.  It seems like most French cities we’ve visited have one -which I think is great.

We walked on to find Chapelle St. Jean.  It seemed odd to add this chapel on the walking tour because it was fenced in and, while looking quite historical, was not open to the public.  The Chapel was consecrated in 1269.  It is owned by the city of Mulhouse and has been a registered historical site since the late 1800’s. Apparently it used to host various cultural events.

Last we walked by the old synagogue.  This synagogue is from the mid-1800s.  

The synagogue was the farthest point out on the walking tour.

On the way back, I took pictures when something caught my eye.

This stretch of sidewalk was interesting.

This picture was taken looking at the garden behind the art museum.  What caught my eye (kind of hard to see) is that the old tree trunk has a crochet blanket on!

Our walk was done around lunch time.  We managed to have lunch before 2:00 PM!!  I don’t usually make a point of showing our food, but I thought it was interesting that our restaurant served a chicken spaetzle, which we both ordered. 

Spaetzle is an egg noodle pasta rather than flour. I’ve always considered spaetzle as a German dish, but I’ve learned that it is also specialty in the Alsace region of France (Mulhouse being part of the Alsace).  Seeing that German’s border is barely 10 miles away and Germany has historically held territory in this area, it is not really surprising that some cultural foods stayed behind when the area became French.

Mulhouse as a travel destination probably wouldn’t be high on anyone’s list – unless something like this was happening there:

Mike and I have been fans of the race for years.  As it turns out, some relatives had planned a trip to Disney Paris in July and as part of that were going to go to watch Stage 16 of the Tour de France.  Knowing that we’re fans of “Le Tour”, they thought the polite thing to do would be to invite us to meet up with them for that stage -they probably thought we’d say no.  But…that sounded fun -why not?  I began planning a d’venture for us that would revolve around the location for Stage 16 (a small town on Lake Geneva).  While pouring over the maps for both France and Switzerland, I realized that Mulhouse happened to be the departure for Stage 14 and the logistics for adding it to our trip were great.  So here we are!  The depart of  Stage 14 from Mulhouse is scheduled for tomorrow.

But… it was shortly after our lunch that the plot thickened!

Stay tuned!

Categories: Part 3: Mulhouse, Switzerland 2026