Its getting to be that time of year. During our 3 years in Europe the Christmas season has meant trying to make the hard decision as to whether to go home or to venture elsewhere for Christmas. It also has presented a not-as-hard annual decision as to which Christmas markets we want to visit during the year.
This year we choose an area that not only has one famous market, but several; Stuttgart (and Esslingen and Ludwigsburg).
We flew in on a Saturday morning and despite a nasty 30 minute passport control line, made it to Esslingen by about noon, ready to tuck into the first glass of Black Forest gluwein (mulled wine - often times with some type of liquor added for extra yummy effect)!
Esslingen, unlike Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg, was completely unharmed by the world wars, so it maintains a Hansel and Gredel fairy-tale effect on all the visitors entering either of the three squares with Rick Steves eatable character.
This is behind the Esslingen Rathaus, a key figure in the town that is at its best during the Christmas market time.
This is the other square, likewise filled with what you would visualize as the proto-typical german village. They even have a cool Christmas pyramid that is on top of a gluwein stand; we obviously got a glass.
Once we let the gluwein numb our senses, we headed to Stuttgart at 4 o-clock or so, dropping our stuff at the hotel and hitting up the Stuttgart market for the night, checking ourt nearly all 200+ stalls. They also have a choir in this beautiful church courtyard at 5pm. There is an electric atmosphere to the area around the city center.
It got extremely cold when walking around....in fact, this is surprisingly the first white christmas market experience we have had in our visits to about 15 different Christmas markets. Good ambiance, cold feet. We ate at a nice microbrewery that serves up some mean german cuisine.
The next morning we hit the town of Ludwigsburg, who have a nice market in front of the church. It was our least favorite of the three markets, which isn't a knock on this market, but more of a testament of how great the other two are.
After seeing the final market, we had most of the day to kill and decided to go back to Esslingen to take in yet more of the festive vibe. You can see by the pic below that Germans don't discriminate, they like wine too!!
This tower behind us below dates to the 1200's and the surrounding street is equally as impressive. One of the shops even sells the building as part of the Esslingen Christmas village set. They literally had over 10 buildings that were shrunk and cloned so one can take the charm of Esslingen home with them.
I think of all the markets we've been to, the top five after 2010 are as follows; Strasbourg, Esslingen, Prague, Regensburg and Munich (Erin may or may not disagree)!
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