Kaysersberg, Alsace

We left Colmar in the Morning of May 7, Monday to visit the wine region of Alsace.  The first town we visited was Kaysersberg.  It is a two-star tourist destination on the Michelin Green Guide.  The houses in the village are almost frozen in time and look like coming out from a story book.  It is actually a very busy town.  Although there are restrictions of letting vehicles into the town, but local people have cars parked all over the place to go about their daily business.  The village is also very touristic with a lot of souvenir shops and restaurants.  It is located in the middle of the wine producing region of Alsace.

HDR Image Processing

Most of the time during our trip to Champagne, Lorraine and Alsace, the sky was very cloudy with occasionally patchy blue sky and sunshine.  It sometimes made very dramatic lighting conditions for the landscape as the cloud moved through the scenery.  However, it made normal photography in the city very difficult.  The sky was often over blown with the cityscape low in contrast and appeared washed out.

We dealt with this situation using HDR Image Processing.  We would either take photographs at series of different exposures then merged them together in the HDR software, or I would take an evenly exposed picture (RAW) and used RAW processing software (NX2) to create a series of images at different exposures then merged them together.

My HDR software (Photomatix Pro) basically has two types of processing to choose from: Exposure Fusion and Tone Mapping.  Exposure Fusion creates more natural looking pictures, Tone Mapping can create very dramatic artifical look.  The following three sets of images are the same or similar images processed by these two different methods.  

In most situations, we did not have much room in the villages to position our camera in perfect height and distance to gain correct prospective of the buildings.  We would try our best then correct the prospective of the images later in Photoshop.  For these three sets of images, I was able to stand on a bridge to get correct prospective and composition thus very little post-processing adjustment was needed.

  

Petite Venice, Colmar

After an hour and half drive on the A35 from Strasbourg, we arrived at the old town of Colmar, Petite Venice.  This is a photo taken from the window of our hotel room at Hostellerie Le Marechal.  You can see why the area is called Petite Venice.

Our Hotel is the green building on the left.  The little pink sidewall marked the Romantik Hôtel Restaurant, which sits right on the canal.

The sun set quite late at 9 PM, thus we still had plenty of light to walk around the old town and taking some pictures.

We had dinner in the Romantik Hôtel Restaurant.  We had fried frog legs as starter then turbot fish with Spanish rice.  However, the most memorable thing was the grande cru Alsace white wine with the most incredible gold color.

I came out again after the dinner to photograph some night scene around the hotel.

This is the front of our hotel.

This picture was taken the next morning of the town square in front of the hotel.  We had a nice breakfast and bought some charcuterie at the corner butcher shop.  We then went on a tour of the Route de Vine Alsace.  We would visit two small villages before heading to Nancy.

Petite France, Strasbourg

We arrived at the old town of Strasbourg, Petite France, in the early afternoon of Sunday, May 6, after a 2-hour drive from Metz.  The rain was still following us.  We decided to have lunch first and we wanted a typical Alsace meal.   Here is a Choucroute  with six different meats, that was for me.

Here is the famous local Alsace dish, tart flambé.  It is almost like a pizza but uses fresh cream and onion as base instead of tomato.

 This is the restaurant that we had our lunch.

 It is a very old building, it seems that not a bone in this house is straight!

 The restaurant sits right on the river and you can see the name of the restaurant, Restaurant Marco Polo.  A very typical touristic restaurant, it was just what we wanted.

After lunch, the rain stopped, we walked around the Petite France area a bit before heading south on A35 to our next destination Colmar.  The area is very beautiful but with a lot of tourists.  With much skill and patience, we managed to avoid most of them in our pictures.

Metz

Metz is the capital of Lorraine region.  It has the largest urban-conservation area of France.  We really only had time to have a glimpse of the city.  This photograph was taken from the Moyen Pont.

I woke up early in the morning of Sunday, May 6 to have a quick tour around the old town.  After Grace got up, we did another round.

It was actually a very gloomy day with only occasional sunshine.  I had to do some fancy HDR for most of these pictures.

This is Temple Neuf, the most photographic place in Metz.

 I had my polarizer with me, it not only darkened the sky but also made some amazing reflection from the water surface.

During my first walk around, I bought some croissants and different pastries from this shop to bring them back to the hotel for Grace.

I refused to take a photo of this cathedral.  But Grace insisted on having one for tourist's sake.  I then have to really work on it to make it worthwhile.

This is the road leading to the Cathedral.  We had another nice breakfast in a French tearoom just next to the Cathedral.

 By the time we were ready to go back to the hotel, it started to rain and then it poured.

Another highlight of the stay at Metz is the Hotel.  It is the old military school, Citadel, just next to the city square.  We were amazed at how big and nice the room was.

This is the governor palace just outside of the hotel.  I was attracted by this morning light to go out at 7 o'clock in the morning to photograph the city.

 Our room was actually just behind this round building.

The hotel is on Avenue Ney.  This is Marshal Ney, you must read about him on Wiki, an amazing piece of history.

Well, another high-point of staying at Hotel La Citadelle Metz is its Micheline starred restaurant.  But we were so tired from jet lag, Grace had to walked around to stay awake for the 7-course meal, or was it 8, 9 or 10?  The only thing we clearly remembered was the impressive cheese cart and each one of us had four different cheeses. I had the most smelly cheese in my life, it was not bad!