Christmas Markets of the Rhine

This time last week we were in Germany, It was very early start on the Friday morning to get down to London and park the car, but staying overnight in London the night before wouldn't have saved us anymore time really, and the car parking was much cheaper than a hotel.

This was my first visit to St Pancras station and lovely it is too, but very very busy.

(These were taken on the Monday we arrived back)

We set off on the Eurostar at 9am and arrived at the hotel around 5pm, a long day travelling.

We couldn't fault the hotel, (Hotel Pinger, in Remagen, right opposite the railway station), very clean, staff were really friendly and the food was good.  You would have thought that it would have been noisy being right by the railway, but we didn't hear a thing.

(dining room below)

Loved the seating outside

Remagen has quite an interesting history, if you feel the urge to find out more, just type The bridge at Remagen into Google, there is a 1969 war film of the same name, which I have never seen but which has now gone on my 'to watch' list. 

The town is so quiet and peaceful and everywhere is dressed for Christmas, beautiful.

On the Saturday our first market was Koblenz, this I have to say was my least favourite market, we arrived quite early so a lot of the stalls were still closed.  Although the town it self had plenty of shops it was rather spread out, a little disappointing really.

We had a walk down to the river which looked very pretty as the morning mist was still hanging around.

On Sunday we had a trip on the Vulkan Express which was great fun, and Santa boarded the train at one stop

Saturday was Linz and it's Christmas market.

The town was very pretty, lovely painted building but strangely not many of them were occupied as shops.

This lovely green building below was an amazing craft shop

Our last market, and the best one of the three was at Ahr set in the Ahrweiler Valley.

We didn't have nearly enough time to explore this lovely town, everywhere was festive and all the shops were decorated beautifully, I could have spent a whole day there!

I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by Germany, I didn't expect it to be so pretty, it's definitely somewhere I would like to visit again sometime.

Next week is going to be a hectic one for most of us, and in this house of course Christmas just magically  happens, at least that's what Mark believes, ha, ha, ha.

 I still have a couple of gifts to buy, I know what they are It's just If I can muster up the courage to brave the shopping centre.

I do have 2 days off work next week so that should ease some of the pre Christmas panic.

I wish you all a good week and hope that you manage to get everything crossed off your lists.

Until next time

-X-