A short visit to the Aschaffenburg Christmas Market

Yesterday, we needed to drive Northwest to pick up an ebay purchase, so, of course, I looked to see what Christmas Market we could stop at along the way.  Sunday afternoons are PRIME time at the markets so I wanted to avoid any larger, more well known areas, like Darmstadt (since retail stores are closed on Sundays, attractions in general are always more crowded then ,and Weihnachtsmarkts seem to be especially so).

Which is how we ended up swinging by the little town of Aschaffenburg ("ash monkey castle")--whose skyline is dominated by a towering palace and the market sits right outside of that palace.

Let's take a closer look at the palace, shall we?

After wandering around a bit, we headed back down to meander through market stalls, with plenty of the usual type of things for sale and to eat and drink:

It must get colder in this region: there were more "partially indoor" areas than at any of the markets near us.  I especially liked these little barrels to sit in:

Their nativity scene felt a bit too modern:

 Overall it was a nice, though small market.  Quite pretty by night:

I'm glad we stopped by while we were in the area.

--Hadley