Christmas markets

  My wife Keewi arrived in Vienna just before Christmas, for a two and a half week visit.  The first thing we did, immediately after dropping her suitcase at the apartment, was to charge off to the Christmas markets.  This is a lovely Viennese (or probably generally Austrian, perhaps even broader) tradition, in the days just before Christmas, and in some cases extending to New Year's.  A street or a plaza is filled with stalls selling yummy street food and hot spiced wine ("glühwein"), and then it is filled with people consuming those things.  Some stalls also sells arts and crafts, often Christmas-related but often not.  Here are photos (all on Keewi's camera) from three different Christmas markets, actually; in the downtown area they are so close to each other that they practically connect:

  That's the Spitalgasse market (the best crafts stalls), then Maria-Theresenplatz (big and open), then Museumsquarter (the hip Christmas market).  I bought a pair of knitted wool mittens at the Spitalgasse market that are pretty nifty; they have a fleece liner so they're warm, and the part that covers the fingers and thumb can be flipped off and back and buttoned away so that they become open-fingered gloves.  I've been wearing those a lot.  Keewi got roasted chestnuts, I got a potato and garlic patty that was extremely yummy, and we split some grilled sausages with mustard and sauerkraut.

  A lovely way to start what we eventually decided was our long-delayed honeymoon!