Marvel at meals
DISNEYLAND Paris has opened bookings for stays at its newly renovated Disney’s Hotel New York: The Art Of Marvel, from June 15, 2020.
There is an exclusive halfboard meal plan if you book rooms with breakfast. A two-night, three-day trip for a family of four will start at £2,600, including the half-board meal plan, unlimited park access and Eurostar travel.
GIVE in to the Christmas countdown and discover the best markets in the UK and across Europe. They are fun winter wonderlands where you can hit the mulled wine and gingerbread and stock up with stocking fillers.
Home front UK markets
You do not have to go far for a taste of Europe’s markets because in many of our cities the markets come to us. Hampshire, for example, has the Bavarian Market in Portsmouth. There is also traditional German fare with flying Santa in Southampton. Winchester holds its market in the beautiful cathedral close.
Bath has deliberately made its market distinctively British. In Oxford the traditional market sets up in the city’s historic Broad Street with carol singers and the warming aroma of mulled wine.
Birmingham boasts the largest German Christmas market outside Germany or Austria, while Manchester’s may not be purely German, but it is certainly older and bigger, with nine million visitors a year.
Across the Pennines, Leeds hosts a Christkindlmarkt, with hearty Bavarian food at the Alp Chalet restaurant and an apres-ski ambience in the Ski Hutte, complete with a jukebox glockenspiel. See visitengland.com.
Tunnel vision Noel in Northern France
A quick sally across the Channel with your own wheels gives you access to lots of French goodies in market form.
In Lille, just an hour inland, Place Rihour has 90 wooden chalets bursting with gift ideas, nativity figurines, pretty decorations and local delicacies. Thirty minutes further on, Arras’s Flemish Baroque masterpiece the Grand Place, is the setting for its Christmas Market. Flanked by a forest of Christmas trees, there are stalls selling crafts, jewellery and wooden toys.
And another 30 minutes southeast is Amiens, where 130 chalets await, with the bonus of Chroma, a new Son-et-lumiere that uses coloured lights and optical illusions to illuminate the cathedral.
Head on to sumptuous chateau Vaux le Vicomte, just southeast of Paris, which played the part of Versailles in the BBC series. French chateaux don’t usually do Christmas, but this one has roaring log fires and story-telling scenes in the tapestries.
In the Grand Salon, a huge balloon rises among frosted firs, while the gardens are dominated by a giant glittering squirrel. See vaux-le-vicomte.com. Crossings with car from £66 return, see eurotunnel.com.
Ferry fine
Low country markets by sea
taste ta Belgian waffles and smoutebollen – balls of deep-fried dough with a gooey centre – and ride ri the giant ferris wheel.
Stena Line operates twice-daily seven-hour cr crossings, with fares starting from £196 for four, p plus car. See stenaline.co.uk.
Take a ferry to a market. The Stena Line connection between Harwich and the Hook of Holland grants access to Belgian and Dutch markets such as in Amsterdam.
From November, the city sparkles during Amsterdam Light Festival and the Ice Village comes to Museumplein, with chalets selling traditional Dutch treats, Christmas decorations and winter clothing. There is Travel Tr by super-smooth German railway around also an ice rink, which opens in front of the the th heartland of the Christmas world. Take in all itwc Cologne its Lebkuchen and Hamburg, gingerbread as well and as gluhwein Amsterdam. mulled beautiful Rembrandtplein.
But the Dutch capital will be hugely wine, on a six-day break that takes in Berlin, crowded so a good alternative, southwest of the Hook of Holland, is Antwerp, a quirkier A three-night stay in Berlin, with highlights version of Amsterdam or Brussels, with a su such as Winterwelt in Potsdamer Platz and the real sense of cosiness down cobbled alleys Christmas market in Alexanderplatz, includes among all the grand gabled architecture. Its fr free use of the city’s public transport system. market has more than 100 stalls, a place to The Interrail Pass that also comes with this
Rail pass Germany grand tour