Cruising at Christmastime

Checking out the Christmas markets of Germany and France

December is a bit gloomy in the Netherlands so we thought a river cruise to the Christmas markets of Germany and France might be fun.

And with the exception of the hour we spent seriously lost in Mannheim, Germany, it was a lot of fun.

We went with the budget cruise line Tui, which gave us a five-night, all-inclusive package for about $200 per person per night. (Viking is about twice as expensive.)

Tui is based in the UK, so most passengers on our trip were Brits buying a fly-and-cruise package. The train from Den Haag took about 5 hours and the NS International app made things easy — there’s a bar code you scan at the Dutch stations to enter and the conductor scanned it a few times during the journey. (We didn’t have any passport checks despite the Germans saying they were increasing border checks.)

Our departure was from the German city of Mainz, known for its Gutenberg Museum and for St. Stephan's Church, which has some stunning stained glass windows designed by Marc Chagall. (We arrived about 4 pm, then grabbed a cab so we could see the windows for about 15 minutes before the church closed for the day.)

The Tui Maya has 79 rooms, most of them on the second and third levels. There’s two bars on the third level as well as the restaurant and the buffet area. Check-in was super easy and took only a few minutes. They took our passports at check-in to speed up the process and returned them a few hours later.

The room is pinch larger than those on big cruise ships. The doors open, which came in handy because the room was a bit on the warm side for our tastes. The only weird thing about the room was the frosted glass wall that separated the bed and bathroom / shower. It wasn’t a big deal during the day but we didn’t turn the light on at night if one of us needed to use the bathroom.

On most days the ship traveled overnight and we would wake up in a new city. The ship usually docked a bit outside of town in industrial areas. In Speyer, Germany, it was a 20 minute walk into town whereas in Strasbourg, France, they ran shuttle buses back and forth during the day.

The two famous markets on our trip were Strasbourg and Colmar. The latter, supposedly the inspiration for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, was beautiful but very very crowded. We thought it was a bit easier to enjoy Strasbourg, where we enjoyed a food tour. They also had the best vin chaud — what the French call gluhwein — out of the markets we visited.

Strasbourg, France.

Our last stop was in Mannheim, Germany, where we got super lost. (Top tip: Always, always, always drop a pin in Google Maps before leaving the ship!) It was dark and sleeting, which added to the stress.

Our excursion card — you exchange your room card for it when leaving the ship so they can tell how many people are on board — had a phone number that was non-functioning. The town map they gave us didn’t mark the location of the ship, either.

In the end we retraced our steps until something looked familiar and we figured our way back. It was a lesson learned — there were things we could have done better but there were also things Tui should have done, too. My main suggestion to them — other than improving their wi-fi — is they should text each passenger in the morning the coordinates of the ship so that have that information if they ever need it.

All that aside, it was a fun trip that I would definitely recommend if you want to visit Europe’s Christmas markets.

For a longer review of Tui, check out this video by Emma Cruises: