I am doing a 3 week trip in end of Nov to Dec for Christmas markets which I posted about before.

I have 3 nights booked in Nuremberg and 3 nights booked in Strasburg. I have 2 extra nights that I want to allocate somewhere in between? I would like it to be relatively in the way by train.

Any suggestions? The goal is Christmas markets and wife loves cute villages/old towns. We are doing a day trip from Strasbourg to Colmar.

Thanks!

Baden-Baden?

Schaweibisch Hall is right on the train route, and has an impressive center (and, of course, a Weihnachtsmarkt: https://www.schwaebischhall.de/de/ku...ihnachtszauber ). Another enchanting place is Tuebingen, though it is a quick duck out of the way south of Stuttgart, it is a university town with charm, and, of course, it has a Weihnachtsmarkt: https://www.tuebingen-info.de/verans...rkt-c90aa7864d

I was also going to suggest Tübingen, and to that I'll add Esslingen, since you like Christmas markets, because Esslingen has a medieval Christmas market. But give Stuttgart a miss, it's really not that great unless you are into luxury cars in a big way and want to see the factories (Porsche, for example).

Lavandula

Hi Travel_to_Eat,

I loved Baden-Baden, which is Mel's excellent suggestion, above. It's a lovely Belle-Epoque town reminiscent of 19th Century resort towns. However, I did find it difficlt to reach by train.

The station is some ways outside of town, and you just follow the other travellers as you all walk from the station onto a bus waiting to take you into town. But for my visit, there was some construction going on in town which affected the bus stops, and my carefully-researched stop had been moved. I got dis-oriented and ended up having to walk back about 20 minutes with my bag...

Hopefully that won't happen to you, too! But just be aware that to get to town, you'll need to get on that bus.

Have fun as you plan!

s

Thank you all for the replies. Narrowed my list to

Heidelberg
Schaweibisch Hall
Tuebingen

Which of the three have larger old towns?

Hm, it could be Heidelberg (been a while since I was there). Heidelberg like Tuebingen has a university that is very popular with international students. It used to be on everyone's tourism map but has fallen out of favour a bit in recent years for no discernible reason, but it's quite charming.

Lavandula