Hotel Cathedrale in Strasbourg

It was recommended in Rick's France book.....we're planning on adding on 4 days to our Best of Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna tour and are looking at 2 nights in Colmar/Strasbourg area. Sadly, the Hotel Cathedrale was booked on our available days!

Did you visit Colmar on your trip? I'll mention we will be there during the Christmas Markets so although we definitely want to see the cathedral in Strasbourg, the Christmas Markets are a priority as well. We'll be traveling by train too. I can't decide if we should stay in Colmar or Strasbourg for these 2 nights.....I have a room reserved in each place and will cancel one of them as soon as we decide which town is better for overnight stays. Any thoughts on this?

Hi Kathy,

We spent a few days in Colmar last summer on the RS Eastern France tour and stayed at the Hotel St. Martin. The Hotel St. Martin is a great place to stay. I'm surprised that the Hotel Cathedrale is already booked. I booked last August for our trip in early December and had no problem. I fell in love with Colmar and vowed to go back there at Christmas. Colmar is small, quaint and charming. Because Strasbourg has a much larger Christmas market and we hadn't been there before, we spent 4 nights in Strasbourg with a day trip to Colmar by train. Strasbourg at Christmas is wonderful. The decorations are amazing. The market is huge. Colmar was cute at Christmas as well but after Strasbourg it was underwhelming. I liked Colmar better in the summer. But everyone is different and you may like Colmar better than Strasbourg. Two days to see both Strasbourg and Colmar will be tight especially if one of those days is a travel day either coming or going. I will point out that all the Christmas markets basically sell the same stuff but we were not there to shop. We were there just to enjoy the ambiance of the different towns, drink the gluhwein, photograph, etc. that we visited on this trip - Strasbourg, Colmar, Rothenburg, Munich, Salzburg (day trip to the lake region) and Vienna. Let me know if you have any more questions. Have a fabulous trip.

Thank you, Mary. Does Strasbourg pack more of a visual punch at night-time? I wondering about that as well. I realize the Christmas markets really change the scenery and now I'm wondering if we should do the same as you.....stay in Strasbourg both nights with a train ride to Colmar for an afternoon. It looks like trains run hourly and are only 30 minutes or so. Our train from Stuttgart to Strasbourg has us arriving in the a.m., about the time the markets open. I suppose if we stay in Strasbourg that puts us 30 minutes closer to Munich, where we will fly back home from.......or would Frankfurt be a better exiting point? I've not booked our airfare yet as I wanted to settle our itinerary first. So many markets to see, so little time!

I went through booking dot com for the hotel reservations....perhaps I should look at Hotel Cathedrale's website directly. I didn't want to necessarily be charged for the room yet as we aren't quite decided yet.

Nope, Hotel Cathedrale is definitely booked for our available days. I went directly to their website!

Kathy,
The decorations in Strasbourg are definitely more beautiful at night. Wander down the narrow side streets as well as the main thoroughfares. If you haven't booked your flights yet, I would suggest flying open jaws (in one city and out from the last). We flew to Strasbourg and flew home from Vienna which was our last stop. I'm not sure how far away Frankfurt is from Strasbourg. Certainly Munich would be a hike. Why not fly out of Strasbourg or Paris? Paris is about 2 hours away by TGV which goes directly to CDG. Have you considered adding Paris to your trip? I regret that I didn't even though I have spent considerable time there. I bet the decorations in Paris are gorgeous. It is Paris after all.

Oh, Mary, I would LOVE to add Paris to the itinerary but we did spend 4 or so days there last spring (with the BOE 21 day tour+time on own)....albeit, not during the holiday season. We did most all of the museums (some with the group, some on our own), sat and sipped drinks in a jazz club, did the Montmartre walking tour, went up the Eiffel Tower, did a Seine river cruise, etc.....we aren't retired yet so getting more time off work after just having 24 days last spring is near impossible.

I guess we could cut out Stuttgart and have 3 nights in the Strasbourg/Colmar region.....I wanted to keep our train travel pretty direct with as little train changes as possible but I didn't want to ignore any must see Christmas markets in Germany. We'll be starting our tour in Munich with the group and we'll probably get in at least a full day before the tour starts. .I didn't think about flying out of Strasbourg because I'm thinking that would require another stop in Europe before heading to the States. Looking at airfare I wanted to keep it as economical as possible. I'll look into Strasbourg.

Yes, open jaw costs more but saves a lot of precious vacation time backtracking. Check the fares and the schedules for round trip in and out of Munich versus into Munich and out of Strasbourg. Factor in train fare back to Munich and how much time it will take you to get there. Add in an additional night at a hotel in Munich pre departure and you may find you're not saving that much. I agree there are so many wonderful Christmas markets to visit that it's hard to choose. We enjoyed winter so much in Europe that we are tempted to go back again in the winter. We were hoping for snow when we were there in December but the weather was mild. Sunny and in the 40's except for one day. No snow to add to the ambiance.