christmas – Darden Travels

A new city! Someone at work recommended Cologne for Christmas markets and that rose to the top of our list. We’re on another train and this one handed us German gummi bears – how cool is that. A little snack for the train ride. 🙂

Walk out of the station, and you are literally hit in the face with this. Okay, I’ll agree it’s not the best photo I’ve taken, but I’m staying true to the story and this was my first photo. Wow, just wow.

We could easily walk to our hotel from the church – it’s on the other side of the building. Standard city hotel – but what a view. This is a little side Christmas market. Not even sure it has a name. On the other side of a building, is the Cathedral Christmas market. Maybe they outgrew their original space and gradually moved down to this open spot?

We needed food – we both were famished. This was one block away and fairly typical German food. Nothing fancy, just nourishing and something to fill us up.

First Christmas market we ran into was the Winter Marchen – lots of gnomes around. Yep, there’s gnomes up in the ‘windows’ in all of the arches.

It covered several long blocks with one block primarily devoted to food kiosks and the other a mix of food and products for purchase. We stopped inside a beer hall that looked fun. No, we did not bring that mug home – too big and too heavy, but great for drinking beer.

And part of that building contained this. Not sure exactly what the ice sport was called, but playing and drinking seemed to be part of the rules.

We joked about this activity during most of our stay – ice skating. Nope, not going to happen. One thing I don’t need to take back would be broken bones.

Since we ate late afternoon, no need for another big meal, but always time for a bag of fried dough and powdered sugar. The chef gave me one of the balls dipped in chocolate. It was delicious, but the chocolate was hot, hot, hot and burned my mouth. Much better sticking with the powdered sugar.

That ‘small’ market seen outside our window when we first arrived………..we stopped in to check it out later that evening and it was all about food and drink . Yep, we added another drinking vessel to our collection. Our first Christmas market mug.

I got to say, I was beat. Eric walked me back to the room and then he headed out to talk with some locals. I never heard him return. Traveling is hard on the body, ha! Stay tuned, more to come from Cologne.

Ginny

We’re here for the Christmas markets, but also for the food. I had a request when we got to Strasbourg………………a repeat visit for a tapas restaurant we visited earlier. Eric made the reservation.

One advantage to a larger group, more items can be ordered and shared. We had plenty, but only needed four for the two of us. First two: foie gras and quiche with goat cheese.

Local sausages and pickled vegetables.

Pork roll in a delicious broth.

Naturally we ordered dessert – which was also a repeat and just as good as my memory: toasted kougelhopf cake, marinated pears with a local fruit puree and a scoop of ice cream. Yum, yum delicious. Not a drop was left on the plate. 🙂

It was a good meal at a repeat location – thanks hon.

Let’s get back to the Christmas decorations. Later in the evening, this wall also had some projections they added.

Now this was a large advent calendar, counting down the days until Christmas. All the numbers were represented, even if you can’t see them in my photo.

Decorations didn’t have to be over the top, sometimes simple and classic is best. Here’s Eric waiting patiently (not!) for my photo.

This was one of my favorite photos. In May, we had dinner at the restaurant in the background.

Several displays had giant bears in their windows.

This was seen on a side of a church, subtle but nice.

Those glasses I mentioned in the previous post?

Before coming, I read that collecting the Christmas market mugs was a ‘thing’. In Strasbourg, it was all about these (plastic) glasses. After getting your chosen hot beverage, a euro was charged for the cup. You bring back the glass, you get back a euro. Let’s just say that we are coming home with a collection. I convinced Eric these plastic glasses were much better (and lighter) than mugs for packing. We were on a hunt to not repeat a glass – we succeeded.

During our wandering, we came across some oysters – Eric needed some. And, maybe just maybe, I had a few of them – very salty.

Another ‘snack’ was a raclette sandwich – O.M.G. Their line was so long, Eric stood in line to pay for the sandwich, while I waited in the other line for pick up. Here was one of the many ‘burners’ melting the cheese before it was scraped onto a bun. You could add a protein and we got the ham.