Planning a Luxury Christmas Markets Tour Through Germany and France

Why We Start Building Our Christmas Markets Edition in July — Behind the Scenes of a Sojourn & Soirée Itinerary

If you're weighing a luxury Christmas markets tour through Germany and France, you're likely already sensing what I learned the hard way in my first year running these trips: the best version of this experience is decided in July, not November. By the time the mulled wine is flowing in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Colmar, the towns worth lingering in — the ones without a tour bus parked out front — have already been claimed by someone who called ahead. This is the story of how I build that itinerary, drawn from places I've walked myself, and why I'd rather spend a summer afternoon on the phone with an innkeeper in Esslingen than leave a single evening to chance.

The July Problem

‍There is a particular kind of traveler who assumes Christmas markets are a last-minute affair — something you decide on in October, the way you might decide on a sweater. I understand the instinct. The markets themselves don't open until late November. But the rooms above them, the tables at the restaurant with four tables, the driver who actually knows which route avoids the holiday backup — those go early, and they go quietly, to people who asked first.

‍Twenty years in the Foreign Service taught me that the visit is only ever as good as the advance work. You don't walk a minister into a room you haven't already walked yourself. The same is true of a market square in Stuttgart or Alsace. So while everyone else is still deciding whether they're traveling for the holidays at all, I'm already on the phone in July, holding the good rooms before anyone else has thought to ask for them.

‍Choosing the Towns — and Why They Sit So Close Together

‍Not every Christmas market deserves a place on the itinerary, and I say that as someone who has now stood in a great many of them, mulled wine in hand, taking notes instead of pictures. I've walked each of these towns myself, more than once, and they earn their place for different reasons — and for one shared one: they sit close enough together that we never lose an afternoon to the road.

This year's Christmas Markets Edition moves through Stuttgart, Esslingen, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Colmar, and Strasbourg — five towns within easy reach of one another, which is precisely what lets this trip move slowly instead of racing a clock.

‍Stuttgart anchors us with scale — one of Germany's grandest markets, set against a city that doesn't get nearly enough credit for its own charm. Esslingen is the one I ask guests to trust me on: its Mittelalterlicher Markt is a true medieval market, not a themed version of one — costumed craftspeople, open fire pits, mulled wine served in clay mugs by torchlight, unlike anything else on this itinerary or, frankly, anything I've seen elsewhere in Europe. Rothenburg ob der Tauber is the fairy tale made real, a walled medieval town that looks staged and isn't, and it's home to Käthe Wohlfahrt — the Christmas store, if there is such a thing, floor after floor of hand-carved ornaments in a building that's been doing this since long before "Christmas market tourism" was a phrase. And then Colmar, which I still find the most beautiful town on this entire route: canals threaded through half-timbered houses in every shade of butter and rose, a market that fits itself into the town rather than taking it over.

Because none of these towns are more than a short, scenic drive from the next, we can afford to move at the pace I actually want to move at — which is slowly, with time to sit down, to wander back to a stall twice, to let a town settle in before we leave it.

‍A Confession: I Collect the Mugs

‍Here is the small, slightly ridiculous truth about why I love this itinerary more than almost anything else I plan: the mugs. Every German Christmas market has its own Glühweintasse — a mulled wine mug, redesigned each year, usually specific to that town, sometimes to that particular market square. You pay a small deposit with your first cup; you can return the mug for your deposit back, or — and this is obviously always my answer — you can just keep it.

‍I have a shelf at home that is, at this point, a small museum of the towns I've visited: Stuttgart's from three years ago, a Rothenburg mug shaped almost like a boot, one from Esslingen's medieval market with a design so specific to that one market that I've never seen it anywhere else. It is, I'll admit, my favorite thing to do on this entire trip — better than the shopping, nearly as good as the mulled wine itself. I build slack into the itinerary specifically so guests have time to do the same: to wander, to compare which town's mug is this year's best design, to end the week with a small, clinking collection that means more than any souvenir bought off a shelf.

‍The Logistics Nobody Sees

The part of this work that guests never see is the pacing. It would be easy to build an itinerary that moves efficiently between five towns across two countries — and it would be exhausting to live inside it. My job is to make a trip that crosses a border feel like it never hurried anywhere.

That means resisting the urge to add one more town, one more market, one more thing worth seeing. It means building in the drive times that let conversation happen in the car instead of silence born of fatigue, and building in the unstructured hours that let someone go back for a second mug. I keep us to a handful of hotels for the full week, not one a night, because unpacking is its own kind of tax on a trip, and I'd rather spend that time somewhere with mulled wine in hand than repacking a suitcase.

‍What Makes This a Sojourn & Soirée Trip

‍None of this is what you'd get from a Christmas market bus tour, and that's rather the point. Our groups are small — never more than a ten or so — which means we can get a private viewing at Käthe Wohlfahrt before the coach groups arrive, or a table held at the one restaurant in Colmar that doesn't take walk-ins during the season. It means the evenings aren't an afterthought scheduled around the markets; they're built in on purpose, the way the best part of a diplomatic posting was never the official program but what happened at the dinner afterward.

‍I still remember standing in Esslingen's medieval market on a research trip of my own, watching a woman in full period dress tend an open fire while snow came down sideways, mug of Glühwein warming my hands, thinking: no one believes this is real until they've stood here. That's the difference. That's what a season of advance work — and having actually walked these streets myself — buys you.

Who This Trip Is For

‍This edition is built for the traveler who wants Christmas markets without the crowds that have come to define them — someone who would rather spend an unhurried evening in one good town than a rushed afternoon in five, and who understands that a shelf of mismatched mugs can be its own kind of travel memory. If that sounds like the way you'd want to spend a week in December, the itinerary is ready for you now, in July, while the good rooms are still available and the good tables haven't yet filled.

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Reserve your place on the Christmas Markets Edition before towns close out — inquire here.