You might have put in long hours shopping for the perfect gifts for others over this Christmas season. That’s fun, but perhaps now you’re ready for some “me” time. Ease any trace of guilty feelings by buying something that’s been marked down to half price. Find the fabulous by venturing to Paris from Jan. 7, when five weeks of massive sales kick off.

Have you given your local German Christmas market a little too much love this season already? If you’re feeling that way, maybe you need to strike out across the border.  I recently stumbled across a nifty little Web site offering information on Christmas-related events in the Alsace. So, if you’re in the market for a market, or Marché de Noël, in neighboring France, pay a visit to http://noel.tourisme-alsace.com/en/events/. You’ll even find an event or two stretching past Christmas day, if you are one to suffer from post-holiday blues.

Looking for some cheap air tickets?  Here are a couple of good deals I have found for those residing in Germany. But you’ll need to be faster than a speeding bullet to take advantage of them.  

Perhaps you’ve been toying with the idea of visiting a Christmas market, but the potential of a long drive through freezing rain holds little appeal. In that case, you could do worse than to plan a hotel-inclusive weekend getaway by train. German Rail presently has several offers to some of the country’s best loved Christmas markets, including those in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Hanover, Basel, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Leipzig. For details, click here.