2016 Christmas Markets

A Summary of the markets we visited this December. Not a lot, as I fly to the US on the 17th so our time was limited.

We started with a weekend in Strasbourg. We had planned a tour of Alsace, with stops in Riquewihr and Colmar, but our friends had two extra tickets to Cirque du Soleil in Strasbourg so we ended up spending the whole weekend there instead. We'll do Riquewihr and Colmar next year!

We stayed at a nice airbnb apartment on the outskirts of the main part of Strasbourg. It was a 20-minute walk on nice paths along one of the canals to the pedestrian area, or a 5-minute walk to the tram and then 3 tram stops. So, it was basically the perfect location for us. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned about the terror situation in France before we went, but staying in an apartment outside of the main drag in a quiet residential area helped a bit for sure. And there was high security everywhere - police checking bags before you entered the completely-closed-to-traffic downtown area of Strasbourg, extra police presence, smaller markets than usual, and before we entered the theater for Cirque we were patted down and swabbed for explosive residue. It's sad that France has to have so much extra security, but I felt better knowing it was there for sure.

Anyway. Here are some pictures from around Strasbourg the two days we were there. We started out wandering around a few of the smaller markets on Friday evening (there are maybe 10? markets around the city). Excuse my poor night time picture taking skills with my iphone.



We ate dinner at a restaurant called the Onion (L'oignon), which had been recommended to us by one of our friends who lived there for several years. The food was excellent, though a little buttery. But french food is always amazing and full-fat. I enjoyed some scallops over risotto and Martin had the tiger steak, which had herbs and peanuts on top of it. Below is a pic of the outside of the restaurant and the wine-cork curtain that was inside of it (I'm saving that for a cork craft idea!)



On Saturday we wandered into Strasbourg on foot and visited the rest of the markets. It was really crazy crowded and not all that enjoyable. Below is Martin pausing on the walk into town.



There is one market that focuses on one country or city every year, and this year it was Portugal! I tasted some of the Portuguese wines and one was decent enough to buy (we drank it the next night already).



The obligatory cathedral pics. It really is impressive, but hard to capture on a camera.



There are a lot of houses decorated throughout Strasbourg. This one wasn't even one of the better ones, but alas the only one I took a picture of! Several of them had stuffed teddy bears all over them. It was really neat. Too bad I have no pictures to show you lol.



And the Christmas tree, in one of the squares. It's supposedly a "market" but it only contains a few stalls. Not even worth visiting except to see the tree, which is likely more impressive at night than during the day.



And of course we made it to our favorite market, Deidesheim, just this weekend. Just 9 minutes on the train from our town, or a 10-minute car ride. It has really nice things to buy, just a higher quality in general, and I find it really atmospheric. The problem is, like everything in the Pfalz is becoming these days, is that it's crowded. So we went early on a Sunday afternoon this year. There were still more people there than we had expected, but it wasn't too crowded. And okay I know I post pics from Deidesheim every. single. year. but it's a little different every time!



For example, this year we got hot chocolate! It being Sunday and mid-day, we weren't in the mood for alcohol (okay I had Bailey's in mine!). These were amazing and just hit the spot.



Okay I just thought it was funny that this place had the word "Krack" on it. It was selling Glühwein and I'm not sure what Krack means or how it related.



One of my favorite treats, kisses! Chocolate-covered marshmallow. :) I was good this year and didn't buy any, but I really wanted some.



And Martin got some roasted chestnuts, one of his favorites.



We ate "Feuerlachs" for lunch - that's fire-roasted salmon, with a mustard-dill or yogurt-herb sauce, on a roll. I usually go for greasier fare when at a Christmas market, but this year I decided to be healthy.



And finally, a few pictures from the new market in our own little town, Bad Dürkheim. The market here is small but atmospheric! Hopefully they keep doing it.

Just a Nice Sunrise

As seen from the vineyards between Bad Dürkheim and Wachenheim.

Finland: Lapland

Last Monday morning we flew from Helsinki to Ivalo, Finland where the airport is a one-room sort of building. We were picked up in our nice Mercedes-Benz bus/van along with the 11 other members of our tour group and driven 2 hours north to our cabins in Utsjoki. Our tour group consisted of 6 Americans, 4 Brits, 2 Mexicans, and 1 Hungarian. All fun, friendly people to spend a week with, thankfully. You never know what you're going to get when you sign up for a group tour but on the rare occasions we do these sorts of things we've always had good luck. Below is a picture of our van (the van in front of it was for another tour group with the same company), and a picture of the airport building. All the vans just sat right outside the airport waiting to pick us up. No security concerns here!



Let's just see what the temperature was for this trip:



That's in Celsius, fyi. It converts to -4 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature stayed there for the first 2 days in Lapland, then it rose to a balmy 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit for the last 2 days. Which felt like heaven in comparison, let me tell you. At night, I wore 2 pairs of wool socks in my hiking boots, two pairs of pants under my snowpants, and 2-3 shirts (including a big fleece) under my winter down coat. Plus glove liners, ski mittens, balaclava, and hat. Only my toes were ever cold, so all that clothing is just right.

On our drive up from the airport we stopped by a lake and snapped a few sunset pictures. Yes, at 3pm.



Our little cabin was perfect. Here are some pics of the inside of it. I didn't get a picture of it, but the sauna was also great and quite necessary after being in the cold all day.



Across the driveway from our cabin was the kotta, which is a wooden hut with a fire pit in it that you can use to warm up in. We spent a lot of time in there! The second picture below is taken from the inside.



We were lucky enough to have clear skies on our first night and to see some northern lights. They were actually really good that night, but we were just learning how to use the new camera that we bought for this trip so our pictures didn't come out very well. Below is our only non-blurry picture. It was an amazing experience to see these! They actually start out looking like wispy clouds in the sky, then you wait and wait and stare at them and your neck starts to hurt and you lose feeling in your toes and all of a sudden they turn green, with bits of red and white, and they dance and move very quickly. It's gorgeous.



There are a lot of factors that have to be "just right" for the aurora to appear. To start, you have to have a clear sky, or at least a break in the clouds, it has to be night, and you have to be away from light pollution. Then, you have to have some sort of discharge of electrons from the sun that has traveled to earth on the solar wind and come in through one of the magnetic poles. Then, they have to collide with oxygen or nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere and there have to be so many of them that the photons emitted are visible to the human eye (billions). So, atmospheric wind direction, solar wind, particle density, solar activity, and cloud cover are all factors and to have them all line up means you're pretty lucky.

On Tuesday, the sunrise was really pretty so I woke Martin up and told him to go take some pictures.



The driveway leading to our cabins:



The front of our cabin:



The back of the cabin overlooking the river and Norway (the hill on the right is Norway):



Chairs for aurora viewing on our back porch:



After we had breakfast we walked into "town", though it was really just the outskirts of Utsjoki. Don't get me wrong, Utsjoki is super tiny and is possibly the most remote place I've ever been to (we drove two hours through nothing but forests to get there), but there was definitely more to it than the three buildings in the picture below.



Some pictures from our walk, which took us about 30 minutes on the "main" road that only 2 cars passed us on during that time. The bridge seen below is one of the bridges to Norway.



Frost. It grows real big here!



After a quick lunch (quick because daylight was quickly fading already) we headed out for the "nature walk" that starts near our cabins. It's just a 4-kilometer path through the woods that takes you down to the river and back. It's quite nice to wander along it. At one point there was a reindeer walking down it and I guess it's more their path than anybody else's given the number of reindeer living in the woods there.



On Tuesday night we had the best aurora of the entire week. Below are some pictures of it. When you're as far north as we were (70 degrees latitude), it fills almost the entire sky and it's impossible to get a picture of it all at once.



We were watching these lights from right outside of our cabins. We were supposed to go someplace more open for better pictures but the battery in the van died because our guide left it on too long with the heat on for us cold people. :) But we still had an amazing show and right from the comfort of our front yards. Below are a few pictures with the cabins in them.



Our guide took pictures of us under the lights. The one of the two of us isn't such a great picture, plus it has the van in it, but it's a nice idea. The one of me looking up is neat though.



We did actually see some white and red colors as well as the green (maybe it was purple instead of white? Not sure), but we didn't get those colors in our pictures. The lights move quite quickly and the reds and whites didn't last long at all.

On Wednesday morning we were supposed to go snowshoeing but ... no snow. So we hiked instead. It was a short hike, 1.5 hours roundtrip. We hiked up a Fell and got a nice view from the top. Here's the group wandering up to the top:



This is Dan, our guide, eating his breakfast at the top. I think he's immune to the cold. And he's from Britain! He's not a native, only spends the winters in Finland, and this is only his second winter. So he has adapted quickly, in my opinion. I, on the other hand, had lost feeling in my toes at this point so I'm removing my shoes and blowing warm air onto my toes so I can make it back to the bottom.



Some views from the top. On the other side of the river behind us in Norway. And yes these were taken at high noon - the sun is behind one of the hills at this point even though we're standing on top of a 300m hill ourselves.



That's me heading back down before I lose feeling in my toes again. There was a kotta at the bottom with a roaring fire in it with my name on it. (Kottas are everywhere, and anybody can use them to warm up in).



Wednesday night was cloudy. We still drove up a hill and waited outside in the cold for almost two hours hoping for a break in the clouds but didn't have any luck. So, we went to the northernmost point in the EU and took some photos.



Here Martin is in Finland at 10:30pm and I'm in Norway at 9:30pm



Thursday was husky sledding day!! But, again, no snow. So, no sledding. We got to pet them instead. There were also some super-fluffy Norwegian horses there. You can take a horseback riding tour but we weren't signed up for that. Looked like that would have been fun too though.



All the huskies were super friendly and wanted all the attention we could possibly give them. This guys name was Tarzan and he was the biggest mush of them all.





When there's no snow, the huskies pull an ATV instead of a sled. We didn't get to go out on it because there was only 1 so only a few of us would get to do it so we decided to be fair and not have anybody do it. But now I have to go back so I can experience husky sledding.



The sauna on the husky farm. The guy who originally moved here, 100 or so years ago, built a sauna first thing. Saunas are the most important thing in Finland! There's no running water or electricity at this farm, still today, but there are 2-3 saunas for you to use there. Crazy.



For lunch, we sat in a teepee, drank some Swedish drink that was basically warm juice of some sort of berry, and ate the Finnish version of German bratwurst-bread-mustard (sausage-flatbread-sweet mustard). It was delicious and the guides there were pretty entertaining.



On Thursday night, clouds were quickly moving in but we got ahead of them for a few hours to enjoy the aurora. It wasn't super strong on this night but still beautiful.



Annoyingly, the aurora started to get stronger at the very second the clouds overcame it.



And finally, reindeer! They're everywhere, but mostly wandering around in the middle of the road when you're trying to drive down it.



In conclusion, go to Finland!! Go to http://tours.aurora-service.eu/ and book this tour! They book a year in advance for the most part, so start planning now. DO IT. :) We did the Asgard tour but they're really all the same, maybe the daytime activities differ a little bit among the locations. It was definitely one of our better trips and you won't be disappointed by the lights, they're fantastic. I want to go back already.