Excuse my French, but I'm in France.: Weihnachtsmärkte

Hey y'all,

Yesterday was a really fun day. Emily and I took a day trip to Cologne, Germany to go to the Weihnachtsmärkte, the Christmas market. It was a bus trip from Lille and took about 4 hours to get there. We left from the end of one of the metro lines at 6:30. Oof. We got up at 5am in order to get there on time and didn't make it back to our apartment until right at midnight. A verrrry long day.

Cologne was freezing. The high was 28 and I don't think my toes got warm the whole day. There was snow and slush everywhere. I like a little bit of snow for a little while, but I can't handle a whole lot of snow.

Here are some pictures from our visit.

Cologne is known for the enormous cathedral, which if I remember correctly, has the biggest facade in the world.

There were 4 different markets in the city, but the coolest one was right next to the cathedral.

We arrived around 10:30am, and Emily and I immediately made our way to the gluhwein (hot wine.) It tasted a lot like apple cider, but with a little extra kick. Plus, we got precious souvenir cups. Worth it.

So much happiness.

We strolled through the PACKED markets, which was annoying, but pretty fun. They were selling all sorts of cool things. Christmas decorations to food (slurp) to leather to clothes. The downside of the trip had to be the number of people there. Oh, and the 28 degree weather. That was slightly miserable. I just now had to look down to make sure I still had my toes. It was questionable yesterday.

I'm actually not sure what this is, but it looked delicious. Emily and I got desserts and I tried something with a really funky name. It was something along the lines of bread with sugar, butter, and nuts. aka heaven.

There's a Starbucks in Cologne, so we obvi went. Every single time that I start to think that oh hey maybe the United States isn't the best country in the world, I'm shot back to reality when I walk into a Starbucks. 'Merica.