tree at a Christmas market in Budapest

Throughout the areas in Europe where Christmas markets flourish, those markets provide a lot of festive decoration for the areas where they reside.

train at a booth at a Christmas market in Würzburg, Germany

Some of them get quite creative.

Nuremberg Christmas Market

Even the market stalls are sometimes festive.

Regensburg, Germany Christmas Market

Nearly every Christmas market had a tree.

Nuremberg Christmas market

A lot of the Christmas markets were next to cathedrals, churches, or chapels.

Vienna Christmas market

Both the cathedrals and the trees tower over the market stalls.

scene at Nuremburg Christmas market

Besides merchant stalls, some markets had stalls or booths completely filled with Christmas scenes.

scene at Passau Christmas market

The Christmas part was a bit more subtle in the scene at Passau.

tree in Amsterdam

When passing through areas not dominated by Christmas markets, most of the lighting was done in white. Lights on trees whether in windows or public places were generally all white.

cafe in Amsterdam

Lights decorating the outsides of buildings also usually had white as the predominate or often only color.

street in Würzburg, Germany

In some areas some of the streets were decorated quite festively with strings of lights and other decorations running from one side to the other all the way down the street.

street in Amsterdam

The street decorations in Amsterdam lit up at night.

festive canal boat in Amsterdam

Even some of the canal boats got into the Christmas spirit in Amsterdam with festive decorations.

tree in Cologne, Germany

Red balls or sometimes other shapes were quite popular in many places – often, but not always on trees.

tree in Bamberg

Tree of red balls at a Christmas market in Bamberg, Germany.

hotel lobby tree in Amsterdam

Christmas trees were of course found in many places.

Ferris wheel entrance in Vienna

Sometimes in the least expected places – like a ride entry in an amusement park.

wiener dog museum in Regensburg

People could buy the ornaments right off of the tree at the gift shop of the wiener dog museum in Regensburg, Germany.

Marksburg Castle gift shop, Germany

We didn’t see a lot of big light displays on buildings, but there were some.

hotel in Copenhagen

Near the end of our European river cruise on Viking Skirner the crew started decorating the ship with trees and other Christmas displays.

decoration on Viking Skirnir

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