For the past couple of months we have been looking around for somewhere to spend Xmas this year because our part of France  dosen’t really do much in the way of encouraging festive spirit. Living in Europe there are plenty of options; Germany especially with their Xmas markets at night, the lights and decorated trees throughout the cities and towns and the people getting into the spirit of it all.  This has always been at the top of our list, but we are still undecided about where to go!.

We recently visited Switzerland and just loved it there, the Swiss also ‘do’ Xmas in a big way, so that is also a possibility. Amsterdam is a favourite city of mine but we have had to rule that out as Shiphol airport is too complicated to get to from where we are. And don’t forget we are travelling as a group of seven. Basically we need to use a Ryanair flight from either Girona or Barcelona. From these airports you can fly pretty much all over Europe, even to Russia, but Ryanair are very shifty with their airfares; a flight to Rome for instance might be £10, but the return flight five days later will be £80!.

We almost booked Baden Baden until we discovered that Ryanair only fly there at some ridiculously early time of day, too early for us to negotiate anyway, and even considered Aarhus in Denmark until Ryanair tripled the airfare in the space of 20 minutes. Personally, I would love a Xmas in Dublin but Ryanair have fixed that…they know that people will want to fly there at that time and as there is only one flight a day from our airport the fare is a ridiculous price. So no chance there.

Oh well, the quest continues.