Today was our last day in Strasbourg before heading back to Paris. We took a walk in the morning to go back to the governmental buildings that we had seen before at night, which were just as beautiful in the daytime. It was a bit sad walking past the christmas market that was being packed up and moved off until the next year. We had another look at Petit France, which we had also only seen at night time, and had another wander around there. We headed back into town to have a last look at the cathedral and to see [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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A merry christmas to all of you, hopes it has been as enjoyable as ours. We started off the morning by giving out our presents that we were too tired to do the night before (although Tesni was a bit shortchanged as we havnt got her anything yet as we didnt know what she needed, we are going shopping when we get back to Paris). Tesni had been very sneaky, she had made notes of what we liked when she took us shopping in St Michel and snuck back and got them. We opened Grans cards too; thank you Gran they [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Well, after being woken up by our conductor at 5.20am for breakfast, and getting off the train in Zurich at 6.25am, we had a walk around the main area of Zurich while all the shops were still closed (we wouldnt have been able to afford anything anyway). They had awesome lights set up everywhere, and the shop decorations were wonderful, so we were glad we arrived so early in the morning. They also had a chrismas market at the train station that had a Swarovski tree with crystal xmas decorations all over it, which was lovely. We had breakfast by the [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Today we headed into the town centre to have a look at the buildings around the town centre and to do some museums and other activities. First we headed over to the Spanish riding school to see what sort of tickets we could get, and scored ourselves some excellent ones. We then had another wander around the town centre, saw amazing building after amazing building, and found the main Christmas market outside the town hall. We had a quick look there, also discovering that inside the town hall they had an awesome setup for the kids - all sorts of stalls [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Our last day in Salzburg... the locals all seem to think a week is far too long to stay in such a small town, but we have enjoyed every moment of it and will be sad to leave. It was still snowy this morning, although raining a little bit as we were leaving our hotel to head into the town. We started by strolling up some side alleys to see what we stumbled across, and were rewarded by finding an excellent little antique shop that had a large collection of the little crystal christmas trees that we had been seeing everywhere. [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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