Last weekend, we decided to make the most of December by visiting some of Europe’s storied Christmas markets. As such, we made the trek out to France’s Alsace region, and hit a couple of the cities there.
W
e started off at Colmar, and headed straight towards a booth selling hot chocolate. Hey – it’s winter, and it’s cold! We then spent the next 6 hours walking around in aforementioned cold, either looking at the markets or exploring the city. Colmar isn’t overly large, and it’s quite a cute place – the architecture has that mountain lodge-look and is well cared for, but it’s beat up just enough to appear as if it’s functional, rather than a façade put up to draw tourists. After a few hours of walking, we stopped at a café, which was noteworthy due to this old dog they had there. It muddled over to us, and of course I started petting it, and every time I would stop it would whine to get more petting - my kind of dog! Anyway, I ended up spending a good half-hour nursing a coffee and petting this dog, just to avoid going back out in the cold. When we did brave the cold, we went straight to a local restaurant that Soph had picked out, which was great, as Alsatian food combines the richness of French food, with the heartiness of German food. Nothing beats eating well after a cold day outside.
The next day we hit Strasbourg, and somehow lucked out and had beautiful weather. Beautiful meaning, still very cold, but with sun. Once again, we spent a good six or more 
hours walking around the city and looking at markets, but as Strasbourg is quite big, there wasn’t a lot of backtracking. Strasbourg has a monstrously large city center, which is great as you can explore it for hours and not get bored (unless you get bored walking around looking at old buildings, in which case you’d get bored really fast). It’s also a very pretty city, and the center is completely encircled by a river / canal, which more or less cordons a lot of the traffic away and makes it very pedestrian-friendly. The market stalls here tended to have more food items, specifically pretzels with Munster cheese; good stuff! We also went on an ornament-buying rampage, so our Christmas trees should be set for years to come with cute French crafts.
At the end of the day, that’s kind of the fun of the Christmas markets. You’re walking around in the cold, buying hot foods and drinks from the vendors, looking at handcrafts, and trying to avoid the group of Native Americans playing flute-instruments and trying to sell cd’s. You seriously can’t go anywhere in the world without running into those guys!
On Sunday we took the train back to Geneva, which is always great because any direction around Geneva, at any time of year, has beautiful scenery. This time, we were able to go through some of the Swiss mountains after a fresh snowfall, and were consequently greeted with miles and miles of unspoiled snow-covered pine trees. It was the kind of scenery that makes you take stock of your life, and think about your place here on earth, and how you could contribute to making it a better place. It also made me think about the truckload of Belgian beer I smuggled into the country, and how life as a professional beer smuggler would probably allow me to see more of the beautiful scenery.
Next weekend: Ski Season Begins!
Christmas Markets
