My dad came to visit this past weekend and he'd never been to a German Christmas market before, so we took him to 4 different markets in 3 days. I didn't take many pictures of the markets themselves, but figured I'd share the few I did take.
We started our tour in Schwetzingen, which is about 40 minutes away from Bad Dürkheim by car. There is a palace in Schwetzingen (currently closed for renovations) and the market is right in front of it. I managed to not take a single picture of the palace itself. I meant for us to walk in the palace gardens and take pictures from there, but we were hungry so we ate lunch at a nice brewery instead then just headed home. I only took one picture, of my dad and Martin enjoying some Glühwein. The Schwetzingen market was actually very small and did not have many things to buy - it was mostly food. I'm glad I went there and saw what it was like, but I don't feel the need to go back to it. The picture below is the only one I took! You can see a small bit of the palace in the background.
Next up was Freinsheim. We had also never been to this market so we were just checking it out to see what it was like. We had dinner at a nice restaurant, Restaurant zum Weingockel, and went an hour early to explore the market a bit. Freinsheim is a cute, cozy, walled village just a few miles away from Bad Dürkheim. Martin and I go there often in the summer on our bike rides. So, any market in this adorable village is great. And the Christmas market was quite atmospheric. Below are some pictures from it.
Here's Martin standing in front of the restaurant where we ate. Waiting for me to finish taking pictures ...
On Sunday, we went to our favorite local Christmas market in Deidesheim. We just love the atmosphere there, and it's always crowded and people are always having a good time. I didn't take many pictures here, again, but you can probably look at some of my older blogs to see pictures of it!
Finally, on Monday we went to Mannheim. We had dinner at C-Five restaurant, which is always amazing, but before dinner we wandered around Mannheim. Mannheim is the nearest "city" to us and it has a wonderful outdoor shopping area - complete with 3 Christmas markets. One of them is really small but the other two deserve a wander through. There are a lot of stalls selling unique, quality gifts.
I loved the stars in the trees here. It was hard to get a decent picture of them.
My dad wandering around. Couldn't stop him for a picture there was too much to look at! This was a whirlwind tour because we had a dinner reservation to make.
The water tower and large Christmas pyramid all lit up. The pyramid even changed color.
And that's it for Christmas markets in 2015.
