Getting to the Strasbourg Christmas Market by Train

There is a very simple reason we recommend the train to anyone coming to the Christmas market from outside the region. For the whole run of the market, the Grande Île is pedestrian from 11.30am to 9pm and on street parking inside it is banned day and night.

A car, at best, drops you in a park and ride on the edge of the city and you finish on a tram. The train drops you about a kilometre from the chalets, roughly half a mile, and you walk.

This page covers the Christmas season specifically, and it is written for a reader arriving from Paris or from the United Kingdom rather than from elsewhere in France.

From Paris: the easy leg

The direct high speed train

The fastest services between Paris Gare de l'Est and Strasbourg take 1 hr 45 min, and most direct trains sit close to that. Departures are spread across the day, with a last train in the early evening.

This is the comfortable, flexible option: a proper luggage allowance, a reserved seat, and the ability to exchange the ticket. It is also the most expensive if you book late.

The low cost option

OUIGO serves Strasbourg from Paris with fares from €16 for an adult, with a reduced child fare and free travel for the under threes. Journey times vary more than on the standard high speed service, and some trains take well over two hours.

One detail the comparison sites handle badly, and it matters more to a visitor than to a local: not every low cost departure leaves from the same Paris station. Some go from Marne-la-Vallée Chessy, out by Disneyland, which is a suburban rail journey away from central Paris.

Check your departure station when you confirm the booking, not the night before you travel. A cheap fare that leaves from the wrong side of Paris is not a cheap fare.

From London: worth doing, but not in a day

Let us answer the real question first. A day trip from London to the Strasbourg Christmas market is not realistic, and anyone telling you otherwise has not costed the evening.

The journey is Eurostar to Paris, a connection across the city, then 1 hr 45 min to Strasbourg. That fills a morning in the right direction and an evening in the wrong one.

The problem is not the distance, it is the market's own hours. It runs 11.30am to 9pm, the lights come on around 4.30pm, and the best part of the day is everything after that. A day tripper would have to leave Strasbourg roughly when the market becomes worth seeing.

Two nights is the sensible minimum, three if you want a day in Colmar or a village as well.

Changing in Paris

Eurostar arrives at Paris Gare du Nord. Strasbourg trains leave from Gare de l'Est, which is the next station along and a walk of under ten minutes on the pavement, no metro needed, though it is not a level walk with a heavy case.

Leave a real margin between the two trains. Eurostar check in, immigration on arrival and a December crowd at Gare du Nord all eat time, and a missed connection on a busy December Saturday is an expensive mistake. An hour is comfortable, half an hour is optimistic.

Changing at Lille instead

The alternative that few people know about: Eurostar stops at Lille Europe, and there is a direct train from Lille Europe to Strasbourg that avoids Paris altogether, taking 4 hr 54 min.

Be honest with yourself about that number. It is not a shortcut, it is a long ride. What it buys you is one platform change instead of a cross city transfer with luggage, which is worth a great deal if you are travelling with children, with heavy bags, or with anyone who does not enjoy Paris on a Friday evening.

The direct service is not frequent, so the whole plan hinges on the connection at Lille lining up with your Eurostar. Check that pairing before you buy either ticket.

What about flying

Flying is an option and there is a small airport at Strasbourg-Entzheim, linked to the main station by a shuttle train in 9 minutes for €3.20 on the train alone.

Whether it beats the train depends entirely on where you live and what the connection looks like. Our practical guides cover the airport in detail.

When to book, and how to pay less

December is the worst month of the year to improvise a journey to Strasbourg. The market weekends concentrate tourist demand onto a line that is already busy with business and parliamentary travel.

Our rule is simple: book the train at the same time as the hotel, not afterwards. SNCF opens its Christmas period sales in early October and the cheap seats go within days on December weekends.

Three things that make a real difference to the bill:

• Shift by a day. Out on a Thursday and back on a Sunday almost always costs less than Friday to Sunday, and it lands you in a noticeably less crowded city.
• Look at the quiet departures. Mid morning and early afternoon are the least wanted slots, so they are the cheapest.
• Compare the full door to door price. A low cost fare leaving from Marne-la-Vallée costs more than it looks once you add the suburban train to get there.

If the whole point is to have nothing to organise, coach and package breaks exist too, with their own traps. We go through them in coach tours and package breaks.

Arriving: from the station to the chalets

This is where the train earns its keep. Strasbourg station is about a kilometre from Place Kléber, a twelve minute walk down rue du Maire-Kuss, in a straight line towards the centre.

If you would rather take the tram, catch line A or D at Gare Centrale to Homme-de-Fer, four minutes, then two minutes on foot to Place Kléber. It is one of the few central stops that stays open during the market.

Which brings us to the classic December trap: three central tram stops close during the day for the run of the market, Broglie, Langstross Grand'Rue and Alt Winmärik. The other useful stops are République, Faubourg de Saverne, Ancienne Synagogue / Les Halles and Porte de l'Hôpital.

What to do with your luggage

A prefectural protection perimeter covers the Grande Île for the whole of the market. At the access points, large luggage is searched systematically, where a small bag clears in seconds.

If you arrive in the morning and your room is not ready, do not drag a suitcase around the chalets. Two solutions sit right outside the station:

• The station's automatic left luggage, platform 1 door 8: lockers in three sizes charged per 24 hours. It fills up in high season.
• City-Locker, 22a boulevard du Président-Wilson, next door: 81 lockers, open daily.

Shop based storage platforms complete the picture near the cathedral and La Petite France, booked online and charged per bag per day. All of these reset their prices each season, so check the current rate rather than a figure on a guide page.

Going home: the one mistake not to make

The chalets close at 9pm, and that is precisely the best moment of the day, when the streets empty and the illuminations stay on.

Plenty of day visitors miss it because they booked a return that leaves too early. Check the time of the last train before you choose your ticket, not the other way round, and keep twenty minutes to walk back to the station from the Grande Île.

If you are connecting onward to Paris or London, work backwards from the last usable connection, not from the last Strasbourg departure. The two are not the same thing in December.

On 24 December everything shuts at 6pm, so the calculation changes and the late afternoon trains fill fast.

Once you are here

You will not need transport again. The 8 official markets and the OFF market sit in one entirely pedestrian perimeter, all within ten minutes' walk of one another.

For the two days that follow, our Christmas market weekend sets out an hour by hour plan, and crowds, weather and security tells you which day to pick and what to wear.

If you have hired a car anyway, for the villages or the wine route, read driving to the Christmas market before you drive into the city, because the answer is not what you expect.

Sources: OUIGO and SNCF Voyageurs (Paris to Strasbourg journey times, fares and departure stations); Eurostar and SNCF Connect (London connections via Paris and Lille); City of Strasbourg and CTS (pedestrian perimeter, closed tram stops); SNCF Gares et Connexions and City-Locker (left luggage). Rail times and fares change constantly: confirm them when you book.