Have a very Edinburgh Christmas!

"It's the most wonderful time of the year!" - Andy Williams

There is a special magic about the Yuletide season - it being a holiday season, with traditional Christmas gift-giving and Yule logs, the end of one year and the dawn of the new. The holiday season has long been my favourite season of all, and spending Yule in a different country only adds to its charm.

A Christmas market is a traditional street market that began in Germany and Austria in the middle ages and have now become a common sight in several countries. Amidst the squeeze of people, shops contain gems - mulled wine, crêpes, gingerbread, Christmas ornaments.

In Edinburgh this year, the Christmas Market opened on November 29 and will close on January 6. It's full of colours and bright wonderful things, with colourful ferris wheels and an outdoor ice rink only two of the many attractions.





It isn't only the outdoors which are decorated, as shops and restaurants go all-out to impress, decking their halls with boughs of holly and chandelier crystals. Real pine trees perfume the rooms, while fairy lights bedazzle railings and doorways. Fancy restaurants like the Dome on George Street spare no expense in putting their best on display for the festive season.



In this wonderful arts culture hub of a city, Christmastime also brings the start of a Christmas concert season - choirs, orchestras, school groups, professional companies, playing Christmas classics such as Handel's Messiah and Vivaldi's Gloria. Dance groups start performing Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, just as they do every Christmas, with dances of sugar-plum fairies all over the world.

Just this past week I had the fantastic opportunity to watch the Academy of Ancient Music in Usher Hall - and the music was like nothing I'd ever heard before. What a difference period instruments make - gut-strung violins, theorbos, baroque oboes, and a whole new world of enchanting, magical music.

The many performances that take place over the festive season make it a great time for music-lovers to travel, with concert halls all over the world showcasing a myriad of music dance and acting.





While in many places the festive season is a chance for family to get together over a good Christmas dinner, it's also a chance for us travel buffs to see cities in an entirely different light. Travel is in its off-season in winter due to the lack of daylight - but this is more than made up for with streets being illuminated in all colours.

You may not see the iconic sights in the way that travel magazines often photograph them, but it is precisely this that makes winter travel as enchanting as it is. Getting away from the crowds of high-season tourist travel, winter is the chance to see an old city in a completely new way.

Where are you headed for the festive season?