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.
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!
Our last stop was Barcelona before boarding the Viking Sky to Fort Lauderdale.
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.
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 ship stopped for a day in Funchal, Madeira, a very mountainous island!
The last stop was Fort Lauderdale where we flew back to Denver on a very uneventful flight!
