Christmas market tour - the planning stages

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Let me start by saying I'm not a big fan of Christmas. In fact, I'm more of a "bah humbag" kind of person. But I do love Christmas markets, especially the ones in Germany. I was introduced to them a few years ago when I visited my friend Alix who moved to Cologne from the UK. I loved them so much I returned every year, until Alix left Germany in 2003 and I no longer had reason to visit.

This year I decided I was missing the mulled wine too much - I needed to visit a Christmas market! First I thought of Lincoln, in northern England, then someone who'd been told me it wasn't much to write home about, and nothing like Germany. So I thought, why not go to Cologne anyway? And while I was at it, why not go by train instead of flying, and visit a couple more places on the way? I've always fancied interrailing, and never got the chance when I was young enough to qualify for all the discounts, but it's never too late, is it? And anyway, who needs discounts when they have a salary? 😊

I didn't fancy going on my own though. My boyfriend wasn't keen so I asked my girlfriends, and one of them, Jasmin, was up for it. I've known Jasmin a long time, and we've travelled together before. We're pretty compatible in that we like taking it easy when we're travelling. We famously went to Leeds for the weekend and ended up spending Saturday evening in our hotel room watching TV and eating club sandwiches because we couldn't be bothered to dress up and go out. I knew she'd be the perfect travelling partner for me.

So we set off planning our trip. We decided we'd take 3 days off work and go away for an extra-long weekend. To maximise our time (and satisfy our need for comfort) we'd only travel on fast trains and stay in centrally located hotels.

As I'm the one with the travel expertise, I did all of the planning. Jasmin promised to cook Christmas dinner in return, which is a fair exchange as I'm a lousy cook, and left to my own devices I'd end up having cheese toasties on Christmas day! I loved doing all the research, comparing prices, looking up itineraries, checking hotel reviews on tripadvisor etc. Our main destination was Cologne, and our first stop from London was Lille. Everything else was negotiable.

First we booked our tickets to Lille and back. That was our only major mistake, because we booked them before we'd finalised our itinerary. Originally we'd thought we'd go to Brussels, then onto to Cologne and back. I knew about the Thalys train, so I looked up their website - and promptly realised that we could get to Amsterdam from Brussels for as little as £24 return! Since neither of us had been to Amsterdam before, and we both wanted to go, we felt this was an opportunity not to be missed, but in order to be able to fit it into our itinerary, we had to change our Eurostar tickets so we could come back a day later (making our trip 6 days long as opposed to 5). Which wasn't bad at all, apart from having to pay extra for changing our tickets. 😱 Oh well. Everyone makes mistakes.

After that, our itinerary was pretty much decided. Depart London on Thursday afternoon. First stop Brussels (via Lille). Then onto Amsterdam. Then back to Brussels and onto to Cologne. From Cologne return to Aachen. Then Lille. Finally, return to London on Tuesday evening. Nice, easy, and we'd be visiting 4 countries and 5 different cities in six days. Thank God for the euro! Can you imagine making a trip like this when every country had its own currency? It'd be madness!!!

Even without the obstacle of daily visits to a bureaux de change, we thought our trip would be a mini adventure, like a shrink-to-fit interrail trip, and couldn't wait to get going. 😊 Euro-land, here we come! Gluhwein, German sausages and Belgian chocs await us. Cheers!

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