Edelweiss is a Heidi-style alpine hideout in the middle of the town, with cosy timbered rooms featuring wild-flower-painted pine bed-heads.

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Scenic roads dip and rise through the region, past farmhouses huddling on hillsides and half-timbered towns with a rustic, fairy-tale-like prettiness.

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For the full-on Tudor inn experience, opt for the Shakespeare Hotel 15 in an atmospheric timbered building on Stratford's main drag.

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Endless photo opps in the little old villages with their half-timbered arcades, the Canal du Midi, and visit the 6th c.

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However, you can also look up from the half-timbered facades of "Tudorbethan" semis to see powering along the horizon a file of Le Corbusier-style multi-storey blocks.

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"A lot of sheriffs are now standing up and saying, 'Follow the Constitution, '" said Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson, whose territory covers the timbered mountains of southwestern Oregon.

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In Grossbasel, the Altstadt (Old Town) charms with its 15th- and 16th-century architecture, including many half-timbered houses, a common architectural style in the German-speaking areas (of both Switzerland and Germany) north of the Alps.

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Zwiesel was charming half-timbered homes and hand-painted signs.

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