Cologne Christmas Market

Before I moved to Luxembourg I'd been told that the Germany Christmas markets were magical. We got to experience one yesterday and it lived up to the hype. We went to Koln / Cologne which is a 2.5 hour drive from our house. We got there about noon and parked under this cathedral. It was so tall and jagged ... I loved it so much.

We came hungry and got a bratwurst right away. I'm not typically a fan of bratwurst but this time I loved it. If you're going to a love a bratwurst, it's probably going to be in Germany. Makes sense, yeah?

Lunch part two was these amazing fried fish nuggets. Noah spit them out right away. More for me!

 There are so many markets going at any given time and we made it to two, the cathedral one and this Old Town one.

 I wish I'd had room for lunch number three because this ham was looking especially juicy.

 So. Much. Sausage.

 We all rode an old timey ferris wheel.

 Nervous squeals and ooohs and ahhhhs as we looked out over the markets and their massive hoards of people.

It was hard to get pictures of everything because we were shoulder to shoulder with people the entire time and we had to focus more on shuffling in the direction we wanted to go and not losing the children to the throng.

These shops with wood carved everything made me weak in the knees.

I coaxed the kids to choose an ornament from this lady's selection. Noah chose a rocking horse and Sienna chose a girl holding a trumpet. They're so cute I almost fainted.

I chose a couple small nativity-type thingies. One is kind of a modern Mary & Joseph and Jesus all morphed into one, and the other is just a small nativity scene. I also chose an ornament with the Koln cathedral carved in wood. It makes me sooooooooo happy.

 A stroke on the cheek for the kids from St. Nick (not weird at all) and a piece of candy, too!