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Monthly Archive: January 2025

11,12/2024 Christmas Markets and Home!

From Venice we flew to Vienna where we met a German friend, Jutta, and spent 4 days in Vienna visiting Christmas markets, the Spanish Riding School (Great tour), Belvedere Palace to see the Klimt paintings. If you want to see a city dressed up for Christmas, Vienna is for you. The streets, stores, buildings were all decorated with lights and ornaments. Vienna hosts at least 14 different Christmas markets all over the city. We think we visited seven.

What are the markets like? Do they sell things? They’re each a bit different and vary in what’s sold. Food and drink (Mainly gluwein which is mulled wine, wine, champagne), a variety of local snacks, and then there are the non-food products. Some of them have local craftsmen products, jewelry, pottery, ornaments, Nativity pieces, not much clothing. At night they are beautiful and tend to be the most crowded then. Lots of residents meet friends at the markets to wander, eat and drink. One or two had ice rinks.

Vienna City Hall at the Christmas market
Best thing about Christmas Markets – gluwein!
Broccoli Christmas ornament!
Yes, we visited the Belvedere Gallery so we could see the Klimt paintings.
St. Micheal’s church

After a weekend of too much food and drink, we flew to Berlin for Thanksgiving, Christmas markets, a few museums, and colds! These were the first colds we had in about 3 years – no fun!

One of the Berlin Christmas markets at night
This dog clearly knows how to ride the Berlin S-bahn.
A gluwein stand at a Berlin Christmas Market
Brandenburg Gate on a cold night in Berlin

Our last stop was Barcelona before boarding the Viking Sky to Fort Lauderdale.

La Sagrada Familia done in Legos, complete with crane.
Even the Lego store has to build a Gaudi house.
When in Barcelona, it’s mandatory to find at least one Gaudi building!

We spent a few days in Barcelona walking around to find Gaudi buildings but did not go to La Sagrada Familia – been there, done that; visiting their Christmas market; checking out the very large city market with yummy empanadas, fruit, and interesting looking fish and iberian ham; visiting a few pharmacies to stock up on paracetomol. In the U.S., we buy bottles of 500 Tylenol. In Europe, not so much! Their “large” packages have 20 pills for about $3.

You can never have too much Nutella.
Gaudi Chimney
Cauliflower of various colors
The fish are barcoded to meet EU regs.

The last leg of the trip was a 2 week Viking cruise to Madeira, St. Maarten and Ft. Lauderdale. The seas were a bit rolling but it was nice and warm! We really enjoyed Viking – no one under 18, lectures, lots of room in the public areas to read or play cards or watch the ocean, only 900 passengers. The food was good and Mark learned all about Sambal from our Indonesian waiters. We met very interesting people and just chilled out.

The Viking chefs built a lovely gingerbread village.
The Viking Sky was ready for Christmas.

The ship stopped for a day in Funchal, Madeira, a very mountainous island!

I knew we were back in Portugal when I saw the tiles.
Ronaldo is Madeira’s most famous citizen.
The church Nativity set.

Yes, Funchal has a Christmas market, too. This one only food and even beer!

The last stop was Fort Lauderdale where we flew back to Denver on a very uneventful flight!

Sunrise in Fort Lauderdale

10, 11, 12/2024 Cruises and Christmas Markets!

We’re blaming Sue for this trip. She finds cruises that look interesting, tells us about them and we end up signing up! This cruise was on Windstar, starting in Athens and making its way around the Mediterranean to some smaller ports. One of the stops was Dubrovnik which has been on our list to visit so we said “yes”!

We really liked Windstar for its size – only 235 passengers. It can dock much closer to cities because it is so small. The stops were good. In Catania we’d planned to take the city bus to Siracusa (we’d been there) to visit a few places but rain put an end to that! It bucketed down for about 24 hours and the officials closed the roads due to flooding.

Mark and I flew to Athens (Start of the cruise) a few days early to do some exploring. The last time we were in Athens was in May and the temps hit 100F+ EVERY day! October is MUCH nicer!

Parthenon on the Acropolis
Much less crowded and cooler than our last visit when 98F was the coolest day we had!

The cruise started in Athens on the morning after the U.S. election, headed to Gyphia, Corfu, Crotone, around Italy to Catania, Naples, Civitavecchia, Naples again, Messina, Dubrovnik, Zadar, and ended in Venice. No great stories for this trip but we did love Cindy, the coffee queen, on the Windstar ship. She knew exactly the kind of coffee we wanted every morning!

Corfu laundry
We saw this little guy on a Sunday morning, just hanging out.

This cat liked to hang out in the window in Corfu and watch the people go by.

In Dubrovnik, we hired Marko, ToursByLocals tour guide to give five of us a 4 hour tour of the city. We met him on time by the fountain and while he was giving us the intro, a guy walked up and said “Marko” so Marko thought he was with us.  Then two women came up looking for Marko, their tour guide.  He checked their reservation – Nope, not him! Then we told him we are a group of 5, not 6, so the lone guy needed to find some other Marko.  On the way to enter the walls, two guys came running up “Marko?”.  Nope!  Marko told us that “Marko” is one of the most popular names in Croatia and, obviously, for tour guides! He hid his name tag in his coat after that!

Marko did a great tour – fountain, graffiti, told us some things about “Game of Thrones” filming in Dubrovnik. One lady was offered by the producers 500E per window in her building (9 total) per day to keep her shades closed.  She accepted!  They paid the restaurant Marko worked in 10000E per day to stay shut and them hired them to do the catering for the movie.

We highly recommend November as a time of year to visit Dubrovnik. Unlike the summer when it’s overrun by visitors, we had the city to ourselves. Hardly any visitors, except our ship, and a few small tour groups.

Empty streets in November in Dubrovnik.
That’s a rain spout and it served it’s purpose. We had a bit of rain in Dubrovnik!
I love this handrail holder in Dubrovnik.

We had to get the mandatory picture outside the Dubrovnik walls.
Even the cats in Dubrovnik know where the churches are.

The ship stopped twice in Naples – once at the end of a 7 day cruise and again at the beginning of a 7 day cruise. 1/3 of the passengers were only doing 1 week; the other 2/3 did both weeks. Naples has a bad reputation but it’s an interesting city to wander around. There’s even one street lined with shops that only sell items for your Nativity set – pizza ovens, veggies, loaves of bread and the baker. Even the church Nativity sets are elaborate with entire villages set up. And we watched some truck driver back into an alley – maybe it’s a street”?? The entire neighborhood watched the process!

We have NO idea what a French taco is in Naples.

Venice was the last port – one whole day to visit before disembarking in the morning. One highlight of the cruise was sailing into the Venice lagoon about 6 AM that can dock right in Venice. We wandered around all day and managed not to get too lost on the way to St. Mark’s. Again, November is definitely less crowded than summer, especially in the out-of-the-way neighborhoods,

Venice from the water

Entering the Venice lagoon

Delivery boat in Venice.

This is where Part One of the trip ended. Off to Vienna next!

(c) Susan Athey