Getting in the mood for Christmas

During our time back in The Netherlands (end of October to mid-December) we decided to make a quick trip in our van to make sure everything was working well before taking it further afield to the UK via France. 

We ended up going to a delightful town in northern Germany called Lübeck which is situated on the Trave River about 14 km from the Baltic Sea.

Although massive destruction was inflicted on the town during air raids in World War ll, the old town has been sensitively reconstructed in the original Medieval style so it was really interesting to wander round and soak in the atmosphere!

At one time, the town could only be entered by one of four town gates but only two remain today, the Holstentor (see photo below) (1478) and the Burator (1444).

Lübeck is known as the “City of the Seven Towers” because the skyline is dominated by the seven towers of its five main Protestant churches. Six of these church towers are more than 100 metres (330 ft) high.  This makes Lübeck the  city with the highest number of tall church towers in the world! And we saw all of them!

The oldest are Lübeck Cathedral and the Marienkirche (Saint Mary’s), both originally dating from the 13th and 14th centuries.

It wasn’t just the historic buildings that makes it special – it is also famous for its fabulous Christmas markets – unfortunately we were a week too early to see them in full swing! 

As we wandered through the streets watching all the stalls being constructed,  the hundreds of Christmas trees being put up and the lights being strung every where, it was easy to imagine the festive atmosphere that would be in the air over the next few weeks!

Lübeck is very famous for its marzipan which is apparently of exceedingly high quality. Not being a great fan of marzipan I wasn’t keen to test Lübeck’s offerings of this almond delicacy but I have to admit, I was very impressed with the quality of the townspeople’s marzipan modelling abilities!

We saw several examples but one shop stole the show with a Christmas crib made entirely out of marzipan!

While in Lübeck we managed to sneak in some early Christmas shopping and had a really delicious lunch out at a nice restaurant with an unlikely name of “Fangfrisch” which might sound like a dental treatment but apparently means “freshly caught”. We enjoyed some really good fish there. 

Back again in Pijnacker we enjoyed some lovely outings including to a local farm to say hello to the cows and other animals and to two local mega nurseries to see their dazzling Christmas displays – most of which have moving miniature models of skiers, ice skaters, fairgrounds, railways and all kinds of Christmassy sights.

We also explored a little bit more of Leiden which is a gorgeous town not far from Hannah and Pieter’s place in Pijnacker and one of the locations where Hannah’s business provides extracurricular activities at international schools.

Meanwhile, back in Australia, our grand babies – who were born prematurely at 28 weeks gestation in May – were making great progress. In November the bigger twin, Eva, was successfully weaned off from nasal gastric feeding to bottle feeding and Matilda, the little one, had been able to drop the use of oxygen from 24 hours a day to night time only. 

Towards the end of the month it was my birthday and I was very spoilt!  I came downstairs to decorations and party hats,  a very special breakfast and a pile of gifts!  Later that day we all went for a lovely dinner at our favourite Italian restaurant. 

As part of my birthday present, Hannah and Pieter gave me a delicious experience – Christmas high tea!  Hannah and I had a lovely time and by the time we had finished eating all the festive food we were really in the mood for Christmas.