Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

We thought we had settle on Baden-Baden for our Christmas trip but when we started thinking about the flight departure time we realised that it was much too early to be realistic so we’ve restarted our hunt.

At the moment, Dusseldorf is in the front position. It’s a fair sized city in Germany so should have the Christmas markets although seeing as they close up on December 23rd it’s possible that we’ll not actually see them. Still, it seems like a nice city to visit with lots of things to see and a very active tourist office which is always a good sign.

However, there’s also the possibility of a trip to one of the Spanish islands. Downside of them is that the flight times are pretty much all “package holiday departures” ie they’re either very early in the morning or very late at night. Those times pretty much dictate that we’d need a night in a hotel in Barcelona probably both before and after the holiday which, of course, increases the overall cost.

Anyway, we’re hoping to finalise things and actually click on the “book it” button today.

We dithered around too long with the decision on Aarhus and the flight prices went against us which is a shame as it looks like a seriously cute place to be at Christmas.

Therefore, we’re back to our original thought which is of Baden-Baden in southern Germany. That has the advantage of having loads of choice in terms of hotels so the prices are lower than we’d expected to be paying. It’s also in Germany so we should get to see some of the famous German Christmas markets.

Now, “all” we have to do is to check out the flight prices one final time before we hit the “book it” button…

We’ve sort-of decided on Aarhus in Denmark for our Christmas break. Let’s face it, how much more Christmasy could a place look than that in the photo (of Den Gamle By, the open air museum of historic Denmark that’s in the town)?

It also fulfills our criteria of being walkable, having enough to do for a few days, “doing” Christmas and, as I say, it even looks Christmasy.

Normally, we’d book the flights first then look for a hotel but as it’s Christmas we’re checking that there is a suitable hotel before we book the flights this time as it’s easy to be caught out at peak periods like that.

We’re now at the point where we have cut down the various options to two, namely Aarhus in Denmark and Baden-Baden in Germany.

Which will it be?

Baden-Baden is in the Black Forest and is a spa resort town. Other than the spa there’ll be the famous German Christmas markets of course but there doesn’t seem a whole lot else in the town. That doesn’t really matter though as we’re only going for a few days.

Aarhus is the second city in Denmark. It looks like it has a few things to do in the city centre, notably an Olde Denmark area which looks quite interesting plus there’s a theme park in the area too. Downside is that the days will be pretty short up there at that time of year and, of course, it’ll be darned cold.

Both are in the running at the moment but we’ll need to be quick before the flight prices go up much more and we’ve to sort out a hotel too.

The whole idea behind the common market, or European Union as we call it these days, was that borders between the countries participating would gradually cease to exist and, for the most part, that has been gradually happening over the last 20 or 30 years. How come then there’s almost always a queue at the border crossing between Spain and France then?

I used to think that it was just a case of “jobs for the boys” until I saw a number of cars and caravans being pretty much taken apart by the customs guys. Presumably they’re enforcing some import control then? Perhaps, but then anything that you can legally buy in Spain can be legally taken to France.

Whatever they’re doing it certainly causes major problems in the Summer when the queues of cars can reach right back to the toll booth (abour 6 kilometres!) and the hill leading up to the customs post is littered with cars that have overheated and had to pull in off the road.