Thursday, December 19, 2013

German Christmas Markets!

This past weekend, we traveled to Frankfurt to visit a German Christmas Market! We got there at lunch and enjoyed walking around and grabbing random food to eat. Potato pancakes with apple sauce, pretzels, bratwurst, and gluhwein. It wasn't too crowded on Friday afternoon, which was nice. We also visited the large St. Bartholomew church. We checked out lots of little shops and a few stores. We had dinner at Schwarzer Stern and it was quite yummy! We talked about Saturday and decided to train to Cologne for their Christmas Market.

Saturday morning we woke to a very light snow, quite nice. The breakfast buffet at the Ambassador hotel was decent. The bad news was train tickets were twice the price of renting 2 cars, so we rented cars and headed toward Cologne. We mapped to a car park that looked close, but alas, the entire area was completely packed and crowded with people. It was quite a nightmare finding parking. After maybe 90 wasted minutes, we headed toward the Christmas Market. We checked out the huge mosaic discovered from the ancient Romans. Then we toured the HUGE cathedral. It really towers over the city.

It was hard to get around the market, it was quite crazy. We got a little food, some warm drinks, and watched a brass band play some Christmas music. We decided to walk to another market in town. It was not as crowded, but still hard to get through some areas. We bought a few gifts along the way, and found random snacks for dessert. The drive back to Frankfurt was quick on the Autobahn!

Sunday the Frankfurt market was a little more tame and enjoyable. We ate at a place with a big meat swing, it smelled so good! Had some beer and warm drink and some more yummy snacks. We had a good time, and I had fun practicing old german phrases I remembered from high school.

Pictures from Germany can be found here.