We didn’t stay at any hotels this trip, it was all apartments rented on either VRBO or Booking.com. (I still call it V-R-B-O rather than their rebranded “Ver-BO”. . .old school!). One weird thing is that, with one exception (Basel), none of the six apartments we stayed in had napkins or paper towels. Is this a COVID supply chain problem? Or just fear that napkins and paper towels will be taken? Anyhow, very weird to use toilet paper for napkins.
But it might start a new trend? Not all new trends are good, so toilet paper as napkins doesn't need to be the next hot thing.
(Friends, next time we’re over for dinner, there had better NOT be toilet paper on the table instead of napkins! I expect cloth napkins after this trip!)
This was our second Christmas markets trip. The first was in 2019. For a long time, I resisted, thinking who wants to go to Europe in the wintertime, with very little light and lots of rain, snow, and cold. It’s really wonderful. Contact me (or Carol) if you want to ruminate on it for a future trip.
In 2019, we mostly did big cities. . .Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg (not a big city, but larger than Rothenburg, Esslingen, and Colmar), and Munich. We did a couple of village trips, which wet my appetite for more of the small towns. This trip, Stuttgart would have been the largest city we went to, but we never actually went into it, as the markets were cancelled.
Of the cities that had markets, in alphabetical order, my favorites have been Colmar, Salzburg, Strasbourg, and Vienna.
Even with the German markets closed where we were, we still got five nights of Christmas markets in, which is plenty. Interestingly, a couple of products we loved two years ago were nowhere to be found. . .is this a COVID supply chain issue, or are those projects just available in the Central European markets and not so much in Western European markets. No idea.
I believe Tom Hale is the best walking tour guide we’ve ever had. His enthusiasm and approach to guiding is perfect. Hire him if you are going to Esslingen.
We ended up taking “only” four COVID tests. Given that we had three tests by three days into the trip, four isn’t bad. Two were free, and two, plus the COVID passport, were not. Definitely expensive add-ons.
Happy to share our trip itinerary and “to-do’s” for each city/town, just shoot me an email. Now let’s get this latest surge over with, so we can get back to Europe!
In Germany, we had a couple days with a few hours of snow flurries. There was also some dusting of snow up the castle mountain when we went to Haut-Koenigsburg south of Strasbourg. There was more rain and clouds than sun, but really, as long as you are prepared for the weather, it's not bad.
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