Germany Christmas Markets 2019

  Germany Christmas Markets

2019

NOTE: Because of the number of pix and the time of the year (it's the holidays and I don't have much extra time), I'm just uploading all of them. Please ask any questions about the pix and I'll try to answer them! Sorry they aren't edited, etc. - but it really would take a LONG time to publish this if I did that. Also - I had 2 different cameras going - so there will be some similar pix.

The day after Thanksgiving-2019, we jumped on a plane for a LONG ride to Frankfurt, Germany. We took off at 6:20 p.m. on Friday out of Dulles and an 8+ hour flight later, we landed at 8:05 a.m. on Saturday in Frankfurt! 

We caught a cab to our hotel, which was just wonderful. We stayed at the Jumeirah Frankfurt for the week. Wow! What a treat! Here are some pix:

We spent our first two days enjoying the hotel and roaming Frankfurt's Christmas Market and city. It's definitely a big city with the Main River running through it. Here are pix from our walking, shopping and eating when we were in Frankfurt:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Monday, we began our adventures on the Deutche Bahn. (NOTE: The use of public transportation, recycling, and solar and wind power in Germany are all things that we should REALLY be adopting in the US. We traveled everywhere by train and there are TONS of them. They were easy to use, clean and very comfortable. There is little to no plastic used - glass bottles prevail, recycling bins everywhere and the people actually use them correctly. Fields are filled with solar panel farms and huge wind turbines.) We left the hotel bright and early and headed to Heidelberg. After a couple of days in the big city, we were excited to see a smaller town. Heidelberg doesn't really qualify as a smaller town, but the Alstadt (old town) was exactly what we wanted it to be and where we spent our day. We took the funicular up to to the Schloss (castle) and really enjoyed the grounds, views and age. We walked through the pharmacy and saw the largest wine barrel we've ever seen. We walked through the town and after a couple of days of German beer/food, decided to follow our hearts to a small Irish pub for a pint. (Man, I miss Ireland!!!!). The Christmas Market here was much smaller than Frankfurt and when we remembered that we really don't like shopping/people, we were good with a smaller market! We stayed until dusk and then hopped back on the train to head "home". Here are our Heidelberg pix:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, we were up bright and early again to grab our coffee and croissant, then hit the train station. Today was Billy's day. The day he had waited 8 months for. Stuttgart and the Porsche Museum! There are lots of shiny cars - LOL - questions on these will all be directed to him and I'll let you know what he says. :-) We spent half a day there, then ate at the museum cafe before heading into the Stuttgart Christmas Markets. The "thing" at this Market was having your roof done up. That's what I'm taking a lot of these pix of. They are not cropped/edited, so I just figured that I should mention that those are what I was looking at. After a very full day and VERY tired feet, we took the train back to Frankfurt, found our daily intake of sausages and gluhwein for dinner and then crashed. Here are our Tuesday/Stuttgart pix:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, we had our longest train adventure - it was 6 hours round trip due to being on mostly regional trains through small towns. Good thing the town we went to visit was WELL worth it. As much as Porsche was Billy's favorite thing - it's safe to say that this was our favorite town. Rothenburg ob der Tauber. A dream town if you are wanting to see what you think old Germany should look like in your head. We walked the wall around the Altstadt and enjoyed the town itself. We had a great sit down late lunch and wished that we had another full day here. We missed a lot, but saw a lot, too. Maybe someday we will go back and stay in the Bavaria region and come visit this one again. We arrived back in Frankfurt well after the markets were closed, so we wound up just getting a pizza for room service before crashing from exhaustion. Here are our pix:

 

 

 

On Thursday, we tossed around squeezing in one more town because we had one more day on our train pass, but we just couldn't do it. We had final stuff to buy, a couple of things we wanted to see really quickly in Frankfurt, and needed to rest and pack before our 9 hour flight back the next day. We went to a real restaurant for dinner and enjoyed our last big meal in Germany. We rested and packed and had our taxi waiting for us at 9 a.m. on Friday morning. We did some last minute duty-free shopping at the airport and caught our plane at 1:00 p.m.. We landed at Dulles after a 9 hour flight at 4:30 p.m. or so....just in time for Friday DC traffic. We finally got home around 7:00 and Quigley Miles was almost as happy to see us as we were to see him. Huge thank you to Billy's mom for staying with him and our home while we adventured!

We had a big 2019 - we bought our home in January, celebrated 20 years married in July in Bermuda and ended the year with a bucket list check-off by seeing the German Christmas Markets. 

2020 should be much quieter and more restful. We will be in Seattle/Alaska for 2 weeks in September, 2020 - so lots to plan for and work toward! Again - I'm sorry this was such a sloppy post, but I really wanted to share the pix and if I would have waited - it would have not been posted for 6 months at least.