A Christmas Story, Part I

Sorry for being on such a break!  I noticed I am not the only one, but I still missed blogging.  I hope everyone had a great holiday!  Besides Mass being cancelled due to the bad weather, mine was pretty ok.  I am not usually a Christmas person, but there was something special about spending my first Christmas as a married couple with my husband.  And he was so cute, too!  More on that later...

I took 23 December off of work so we could visit some more Christmas markets.  We took advantage of the day and drove to a town called Valkenburg in the Netherlands.  It was such a cute little town!  Well, besides the blizzard that we ran into!  They have their market in their Velvet Caves, which was great because we got a respite from all of the bad weather.  It was about 50 degrees there, too, which beat the way below freezing temps outside.

Next we drove back into Germany to visit Köln.  It was supposed to only take an hour to drive there, but it took over two and a half hours because we were driving in this, at best...

I had been to Köln before, but this was a first for Joel, so it was pretty special.  And the market did not disappoint!  Very good Glühwein, yummy food, and beautiful scenery.  Well, except for the mixture of rain/sleet/hail/snow.  That wasn't so fun.