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Looking at booking a long-weekend city break in December and want to tie it in with a good Christmas market. Previous years we've been to Innsbruck and Munich. I'm considering Berlin or Vienna, but looking for any tips on other ones to consider.
Cheers
A couple of years ago we went to Bruges for a night on our way to Cologne in Germany.
Very straightforward drive over via the Euro tunnel.
The markets in Bruges were nice and bruges is a cool place.
Cologne was amazing so many different markets we spent 3 days there, all slightly differently themed.
Cologne.
EoT
I'll have a look at Cologne. Thanking you 🙂
Birmingham?
Strasbourg?
the Prague ones are good fun. Plenty of hot mead etc.
And if you've never seen a grizzled fishmonger on a street corner battering a massive carp to death in front of a wailing child and his gran, you've not lived 😉
Strasbourg is really nice, especially at Christmas. The food isn't very French, more Germanic. There's probably better beer in Cologne though...
The women in Prague are well worth the visit in winter.
They love tight jeans, longs thigh length boots and short jackets...........
If the wife asks why you're wearing sunglasses - tell her the cold air is bad for your tear film 😉
We went to Duesseldorf a couple of years ago, which was a very good Christmas market. It's about an hour on the train from Cologne too, so we had a day trip there as well.
We chose Duesseldorf, as that's the airport we flew into, and we figured it was easy enough to get to Cologne. But, the other way might work better; stay in Cologne & get the train to Duesseldorf.
If you do decide on Duesseldorf, I highly recommend the Mercure hotel we stayed at. It was about a minutes walk from the train station (about 10 mins into the centre) with very comfy rooms & nice bar and an absolutely amazing breakfast. We chose it because it looked to be one of the cheapest for that time of year, but we were very impressed. Obviously it might not be suitable if you want to be right in the centre, but we didn't have to wait longer than about 10 mins for a train.
Dortmund is pretty good to, but much smaller; we went there the year before, as I have spent a few weeks in Dortmund but never at Christmas. There was plenty to do for a short break, but you might run out of options, depending on how much standing around drinking gluehwein you do!!
...and bruges is a cool place.
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*TBF, I hear it's lovely. Canals and everything.
Strasbourg is nice at Christmas. As mentioned above the food is more german than french.
Hamburg's pretty good, but cover the fair (Dom) as well.
Vienna markets are great. The best ones are in the suburbs which are for the locals. The ones in the city are touristy and very very expensive compared to the others.
Nuremberg is the one by all accounts (it is the one that the Germans travel to in order to get the real deal). To be honest, it is the weather that makes the market. I lived in Stuttgart for several years and it has a really nice Christmas market. However, if it was ice cold and with lying snow it was magical. If it was mild and foggy, it was a bit meh TBF.
BM
Berlin and cologne. Both great cities too.