This year for Christmas I didn’t want to just write about places that I have visited, instead I wanted to give advice and reasons why YOU should travel at Christmas. At this time of year, especially at work, everyone starts to ask you what you do for Christmas Day and when I tell them I travel I always get the same response – fascination and people telling me it sounds wonderful. Well, let me tell you, it is wonderful, I love going away at Christmas more then anytime of the year because everything is always a little bit special and people in different countries celebrate so differently. So this year, I am going to talk about different reasons why I adore going away in the festive season starting with one of the most fun reasons – The Lights

I love Christmas Lights, I adore how festive they are and always really adore watching them flicker in the streets. When I was a kid I used to love driving through neighbourhoods seeing what they had done as some were really creative but put that on the scale of seeing it abroad, it is on a whole another level.

Funchal, Madeira

The one thing about Christmas lights is that some countries see it as a competition and pride themselves in putting on a show – there have been so many places I have visited that have an amazing display of christmas lights – a lot of the time it is due to tourism – they know that they are going to get visitors far and wide. An example of this is Madeira as they get a lot of cruise ships in and they welcome people to their capital with a festival of lights.

Chicago

One of the places that really go above and beyond for Christmas lights is America and one of my favourite places for this has been Chicago – it turns into a little Christmas Town like the Nightmare Before Christmas and it is wonderful. The lights just put everyone in a great mood. Also, on Christmas Eve we walked around the houses in the neighbourhood that we were staying in to see what the families near by had done and some people really put on such a show on their own family homes it was lovely.

Bayonne

Another place I have visited that I found really impressive with their lights was a little town in South West France called Bayonne. It may of been a small town but the lights display that they put on was beautiful and was so pretty to see. Considering that we were not meant to go there and sort of stumbled on the town, it was a wonderful accident.

So yes, Christmas lights make Christmas abroad so wonderful and festive – it makes it a perfect reason to go away for the season.