Les Volets Bleus is a bed and breakfast at Urbès, a village in the Thur valley in the southern Vosges, on the Alsace side of the ridge below the Col de Bussang. The house is what the name says: a tall butter-yellow building with blue shutters, a long balcony under a blue awning, a lawn in front and the wooded slope rising behind it.
There are three rooms, which the owners call spacious and full of character, and a fourth called Anges that opens off one of them and takes an extra bed or two. The others are Marine, the Suite Orientale and Teddy. Each has a television, a DVD player and free wifi. Breakfast comes with the room, along with the tourist tax, and there is private parking.
On some evenings the owners cook a table d'hôte, one price for everything, and a good deal of what they post is what came out of that kitchen. Cards are not accepted, so bring another way to pay.
The valley is the reason to be here: walking and cycling over the cols in summer, the Markstein and the Grand Ballon in winter, and Colmar and the wine road about an hour east.
