Christmas is six weeks long. Somewhere it is already dark by four.
Which market opens in mid-November and shuts on Christmas Eve. What the Dyker Heights bus really costs. Whether Rovaniemi is worth the flight with a four-year-old. Reviews of the festive trips you can actually book.
A bus through the London lights, a reindeer sleigh, Brooklyn and a Stollen stall.
Four bookings that carry a whole December between them, and what the people who took them say.
01The London nightChristmas Lights Bus Tour With Live GuideTwo hours through Oxford Street, Regent Street and the West End from the top deck, with a guide who knows which switch-on is which.
02The Arctic dayReindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageReindeer, huskies and Santa Claus Village in one run from Rovaniemi. December slots go months ahead of the snow.
03The Brooklyn runDyker Heights Christmas Lights & Skyline View Bus TourDyker Heights does not do restraint. The bus saves you the subway ride out and the hour of walking in the cold.
04The Advent morningAdvent Tour with Stollen Tasting and Mulled WineDresden trades Stollen and mulled wine under the oldest market in Germany. Go on a weekday before the coaches arrive.
Six cities that put their whole December on the street.
A West End switch-on, a Brooklyn block that wires its own roof, the Arctic Circle with a post office on it, a square in Saxony that has traded Stollen since 1434. Six places to build the trip around, and the best night out in each.
Somebody has to drive. On a lights tour it is not you.
Christmas lights are spread across a whole city and they all switch on at once. An open-top bus, a vintage Routemaster or a guided walk gets you past the lot in an evening, warm, and without a parking space to find.
The market stalls go up in November and come down on Christmas Eve.
Every market tour →
Every German-speaking city runs one, no two taste the same, and the good guides know which stall does the Feuerzangenbowle and which hut has been in the same family for sixty years. Three ways to do it.
Dresden, Nuremberg, Cologne
The old German markets open the Monday before Advent and close on the 23rd or 24th. A guided walk gets you the Stollen stall, the mulled wine that is worth queueing for and the history nobody prints on the map.
Strasbourg and Colmar in Alsace
Strasbourg has run its market since 1570 and Colmar wraps five of them around one small town. Both are walkable, both are packed after four, and both are best on a weekday morning.
Vienna and Salzburg
Austrian Advent pairs the market with a church concert or a Mozart evening. Book the concert first and fit the huts around it, because the seats sell out and the Glühwein does not.
The festive trips more travellers book than any other.
Every festive tour we have reviewed →The evenings and days out with the longest queue behind them, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Christmas Lights Bus Tour With Live Guide
Ride through central London for 60 to 90 minutes while a live English-speaking guide points out the city’s Christmas lights and landmarks. Expect Regent Street angels, Oxford Street stars on most departures, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, the Strand, Big Ben, and the London Eye. Guides such as Brennan, Shaun, Ethan, and Emma add history and humor.
From · $33
Read our review →
2
Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village
from $221
3
London by Night Bus Tour with Christmas Lights and Live Guide
from $41
4
Tootbus Open-Top Christmas Bus Tour
from $46
5
Dyker Heights Christmas Lights & Skyline View Bus Tour
from $69
6
London Christmas Lights Tour by Vintage Bus Open Top
from $37
7
Snowman World Entry Ticket in Santa Claus Village
from $41
8
Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Guided Tour
from $63
Brooklyn rooftops, a harbour cruise, or a Branson stage. Pick the evening.
The American version runs on suburbs that decorate like it is a competition, boats that go out with the skyline lit, and theatres that put on two shows a day through December. Four kinds of night, and what each costs to walk into.
Santa keeps office hours, and they are on the Arctic Circle.
Rovaniemi runs a working post office, a reindeer farm and a husky kennel within a few kilometres of each other, and the whole thing is bookable by the half day. Snow is on the ground from late November; the light lasts about four hours in December, which is less a problem than a mood.
Every trip north →
What a December night out actually costs.
Every trip on the site, grouped by price. Plenty of the best festive evenings cost less than the dinner you would have had anyway.
Market walks, mulled-wine tastings, lights buses and an hour on a river with a choir.
The full evenings: Advent concerts with dinner, Dyker Heights by coach, a day at Santa Claus Village.
Private guides, husky safaris, sleigh rides and the New Year table with a window on the fireworks.
Three festive traditions worth crossing a border for.
Fairy lights and a tree happen everywhere. A Brooklyn street competing with itself, a post office on the Arctic Circle and a market that has traded since the sixteenth century do not.
The Dyker Heights Lights
Somewhere in the 1980s the residents of a few blocks in south Brooklyn started trying to out-decorate each other, and they never stopped. Some houses hire professional installers in October. It is a long way out on the R train and the streets are residential, so most people take the bus tour from Manhattan and walk the loop with a guide who knows which block peaked this year.
- 1Dyker Heights Christmas Lights & Skyline View Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,192 reviews
- 2Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 920 reviews
- 3Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 838 reviews
Santa Claus Village
The village sits eight kilometres north of Rovaniemi on the line of the Arctic Circle, and Santa is there every day of the year. The meeting itself is free; the photographs, the reindeer, the huskies and the snowmobiles are what you book. Slots for the fortnight before Christmas are gone by autumn, and the light is down to a blue hour by two in the afternoon.
- 1Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,334 reviews
- 2Snowman World Entry Ticket in Santa Claus Village★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 1,081 reviews
- 3Santa Claus Village and Arctic Circle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 355 reviews
The Striezelmarkt, Dresden
Dresden has run a Christmas market since 1434, which makes it older than most of the countries that copied it. The Stollen is the point: a giant one is paraded through the city on the second Saturday of Advent behind a baker carrying an oversized knife. Go on a weekday morning, before the day coaches from Prague and Berlin arrive.
- 1Christmas Markets Food Tour in Munich★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 110 reviews
- 2Original Munich Christmas Market Tour with Festive Wine and Food★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 85 reviews
- 3Munich Christmas Market Food Tour with Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 54 reviews
Four festive bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of December can be arranged from a hotel lobby the night before. These four run on a short season, a fixed date or a seated room, and they are sold out long before the tree goes up.
- 01Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageThe fortnight before Christmas is the only fortnight most families can travel, and Rovaniemi knows it. Slots go months ahead.
- 02Dyker Heights Christmas Lights & Skyline View Bus TourThe lights run a few weeks and the coaches are small. Weekend departures in the week before Christmas go first.
- 03The Nutcracker Ballet TicketsA ballet has a seat count and a run of dates. Once the December performances sell, there is no second bus laid on.
- 04Christmas & New Year’s Concert in St. Peter’s ChurchA seat on the 31st is one night with a fixed capacity, whether it is a concert, a table or a boat. The good ones are gone weeks before the day.
The markets shut on Christmas Eve. The week after is a different trip.
Nearly every German and Austrian market packs up on the 23rd or 24th, and half of Europe closes with it. What keeps running between Christmas and the 2nd is the lights, the rinks, the river boats and then the fireworks. Plan the week after around those, not around stalls that will not be there.
Where the illuminations are worth the trip on their own.
A handful of cities switch on properly: angels over Regent Street, a Brooklyn block with its own generator, the Champs-Élysées from a bus. These are the ones travellers rate highest.
By place — city, country or Arctic Circle
By kind of night — stall, sleigh, stage or deck
London, Paris, Alsace, Bavaria, Vienna, Prague: the week most people do first.
Strasbourg
Colmar
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