Saturday morning I took the 2 hour 45 minute train down to Köln (Cologne) with Rachel and Ashley to visit the city's festive Christmas markets.
When we exited the train station, I was immediately overwhelmed by a beautiful Cathedral (Kölner Dom) right in front of us. It is enormous, and has such wonderful detail very typical gothic architecture. I spent a bit of time staring at the thing both during the day, and also later in the evening when it was all lit up. I was very impressed. I just looked it up online, and it turns out it does have some bragging rights: "The cathedral is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spire and largest façade of any church in the world. The choir has the largest height to width ratio of any medieval church."—Wikipedia
As for the markets, there are 4. The first one, was set at the base of the Cathedral. A very nice backdrop to do some Christmas shopping, drink some glühwein, and feast on some delicious potato hash-brown fritter things dipped in apple sauce. You'll notice a few pictures of the glühwein below, and this is because every market had their own mug. So, the many cup pictures are to show the different mugs for the different markets.
After spending a couple hours wandering the stalls and loosing track of each other in the sea of black coats, we hopped the tractor/train to the next market.
The second market had a gnome theme. As you were wondering around, at any given moment you could look up and see some gnomes peering down at you from the rooftops. I admit, it was kind of adorable and not creepy at all.
The structures at this market were also quite impressive. They were all wooden and had an impressive amount of detail to them for being temporary structures. I think this was my favorite of the markets. Felt very Christmas-y, and I can just imagine it being amazing in the snow!
Next stop was the pirate market. Because every pirate needs a Christmas market!
Ashly made a poor shoe choice for a rainy winter day. Pretty much right after arrival, her feet were wet. After buying fresh socks, and looking in a store for some replacement boots, we decided to try our luck with plastic. Fresh, dry sock, then bag, then boot. It seemed to work pretty well! Below we have Ashly swapping socks and showing off her lovely boot-shaped plastic bag.
The last market was, I believe, the market of angels. I don’t recall seeing angels everywhere, but I do recall how beautiful the lights were. We got to this market around dusk, so everything was beginning to glow very nicely. There were tons of lights. My favorite were the star-shaped lights up in the trees. We were a little shopped-out at this point, so we spent most of our time at this market sipping glühwein. We also tried the smoked salmon, and a waffle. And no, not together.
We caught our chariot back to the starting point to be greeted once again by the massive cathedral—this time all lit up. I once again lost my party because I stopped to stare at it just a bit too long. I think I gave it a good, solid, 3-minute stare down.
By 7:30 we were back on the train, bags full of treasures and bellies full of treats!
No comments:
Post a Comment