This morning we jumped on the train to take a trip to Colmar. This is a smaller town about half an hour away, and is another one of the pretty little towns that are on the wine trail in this area. The town was beautiful, with lovely buildings and gardens, and the christmas markets had a great atmosphere. The first market was pretty traditional, but the second market we went to had all sorts of local artisans and antique dealers displaying their wares; we have seen some stunning jewellery today. We walked the town, and were really glad that we had made the effort to go there. We then came back to Strasbourg and had a rest before walking into town once again after dark. We went a different way into town and walked past all ... read more

Strasbourg has lived up to all our expectations. It calls itself the capital of christmas, and they really go all out for it here. All the streets are decorated differently and in themed, and the markets have been wonderful. Our hotel seemed to be ages away from everything, but when it came to actually walking into town in the morning turns out everything is very compact; it only took us about 15 minutes to walk into town (and that was with mum stopping to ooh and ahh every 2 minutes). There are 3 main christmas markets, one we ended up getting a whole lot of christmas lights at, they had rows of them, another one had the most awesome food and was set right outside the cathedral (which is immense), and the other one is mostly ... read more

Today was our bonus day in Vienna. We took it easy, having a sleep in this morning and then sauntering into town for a spot of shopping and more sightseeing. We went back to the main Christmas market to have a proper look (although didnt buy anything except some excellent sausages), and also stumbled across another excellent market between more beautiful buildings (everywhere you look in this city is beautiful, its quite overwhelming sometimes). We also went back to a great stall that we found with these excellent little coconut, almond and chocolate cakes, and bought a whole lot more to fortify us for the journey tonight. We have now spent hours and hours updating the blog with photos (i hope you all appreciate it) and are now going to go out for dinner to celebrate ... read more

Today we arrived in Vienna. We will be doing a whirlwind tour, cos we are only here for two days, but it is a beautiful city so far. We arrived on the train at around 9am, and after dropping our bags at the hotel headed off to Schloss Shonbrunn (the austrian version of Versailles). There was a Christmas market located outside the Schloss, but it was nothing compared to the Salzburg one, and it was raining, so we didnt spend much time there. We headed inside amidst the throngs of hundreds of tourists (stupid weekends) and headed inside to have a look (after opting for a pamphlet instead of an audioguide, everywhere has them and we were a bit sick of listening by then). It was wonderfully decorated, although we were a bit surprised at the ... read more

Another day trip (had to take advantage of our train ticket). We headed off early to Innsbruck, which is just under 2 hours away on the train. The first thing we wanted to do is visit the Swarovski Kristallwelten (crystalworlds), which is in a village a little way out of Innsbruck. It was all very well organised, we hopped in a dedicated shuttle straight out of the train station and were at the kristallwelten in about half an hour, you had two hours to go through the whole thing (well, an hour to go through the displays and then an hour to hang out in the largest Swarovski shop in the world to try to talk yourself into paying their exorbitant prices) and then the shuttle takes you straight back to the train station. The displays ... read more