Holland America is planning a cruise into the Christmas Market market with two cruises that will sail to multiple ocean ports for next year’s traditional markets in multiple cities; it’s a market that’s familiar to many in the form of river cruises.
The cruise line’s Nieuw Statendam, a 2,700-passenger vessel, will sail a 13-day Baltic and Scandinavia itinerary starting December 5, 2027, and then a 15-day version starting on December 18. Both will be round-trips starting at Rotterdam, with a call at Dover, England as well.
For obvious reasons, the Holland America itineraries won’t reach some of the most common Christmas market cities such as Strasbourg, Nuremberg, Vienna or Cologne because they are too far inland, but does include Hamburg, Tallinn, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki. The 15-day cruise also includes Oslo, Kristiansand and Stavanger, Norway along with Aarhus, Denmark.
Christmas markets are a widespread European tradition, one that has grown in recent years as increased interest and tourism has made them profitable not only for merchants, but also for hotel and restaurants operators in the various cities. River cruise lines such as Viking, Ama Waterways and more that used to shut down for the winter now offer an almost endless variety of December cruises based on the markets.
Photo by Daniels Joffe on Unsplash
