SPRING TOUR 2020 – DAY 4
| 11 MAY 2020 | Distance 90 km | Driving time 2:00 h |
|---|---|---|
| 09:00 h | Start | Hotel Mulhouse Centre (parking) |
| 09:15 h | Museum | Cité de l’Automobile (parking) |
| 13:30 h | Lunch | Restaurant Le Fangio |
| 17:00 h | Hotel | Grand Hôtel Du Tonneau D’Or, Belfort |
| GPX – route | GPX – track | TomTom |
Day 4 of the Spring Tour will be a day with less driving than the other days. And this is for a reason, while the highlight of this day is a visit to the Cité de l’Automobile in Mulhouse. This world famous museum is proud owner of the (in)famous Schlumpf Collection. Read all about this collection here. Besides this – mainly Bugatti – collection a lot more cars are exhibited among which many race cars.
The museum visit will end with a nice Argentinian lunch in Le Fangio restaurant which houses inside the museum building.
Participants who just can’t get enough of the museum can extend their visit in the afternoon and drive directly to the Grand Hôtel Du Tonneau D’Or in Belfort afterwards. The drivers among us will hop in their sports cars though and enjoy a 2 hour drive to the hotel by a scenic route which crosses the Swiss border when we do a northern Jura fly by.
Belfort, with its charming and beautifully lit old city and fortifications, will be our home for two nights. In the old days, Belfort was the only feasible route into France for hundreds of kilometres to the north or south, and many French Kings and leaders did their best to fortify it. Louis XIV ordered the Iron Belt and the elaborate citadel that was planned by Vauban, the great military architect of the day.
In an epic position on a ledge beneath bluffs and a section of the citadel walls is the redoubtable statue of a lion. This was made in 1880 by Frédéric Bartholdi. He was the man who designed the Statue of Liberty in New York, and his lion is made from sandstone blocks, sculpted down the slope and brought up to this ledge piece by piece to be assembled. Bartholdi’s lion has fathered some 150 cubs around the city, which appear as statues, sculpted architectural features, murals, fountains and door knockers.