Where To Go Now: A European River Cruise Slideshow

This is what a dinner looks like aboard the hip river vessel A-Rosa Silva: Roasted and lacquered pork with potato-stuffed roasted onion.

The Christmas season at night in Frankfurt is prime time to visit the town's Christmas Market.

Manning the grills at a wurst stall at the Frankfurt Christmas Market is no easy task.

Wurst stalls at the Frankfurt Christmas Market show visitors exactly where to deposit empty wrappers.

Frankfurters, smoked pork shoulder, and sauerkraut are served at the traditional Franconian restaurant Lorsbacher Thai. There are long communal tables at this convivial beer hall where platters are piled high with an assortment of traditional cuts and cooking methods of the pig (pork chops, frankfurters, wursts, smoked pork shoulder) served with all the traditional accompaniments, including vinegary potato salad, sauerkraut, a selection of excellent spicy mustards, and handkäse, a regional specialty of very young fermented whey.

Save room for real apple strudel with fresh cream at Lorsbacher Thai in Frankfurt.

Teehaus Bachfischer in downtown Regenburg has a tea bar downstairs and a full café above it. This is a tea lover's tea shop, with bins and bins to explore and sniff and dream about, a small ground-floor tea bar, and an upstairs café. Teas are imported from around the world, but a local almond-vanilla black tea, a traditional German variety, was just-right for a damp, sleety day in December.

The famous cake-like German-style gingerbread that's hard on the outside and soft on the inside is piled high in one of many stalls at the Nuremberg Christmas Market.

Barrels of various kinds of lebkuchen, the great German gingerbread, are on sale at markets throughout Germany. Variations of the cinnamon-ginger spicy, soft-on-the-inside, hard-on-the-outside cookies include Elisen-type which is studded with almonds and topped with a coating of sprinkled sugar.

The trend at Christmas markets in Germany this year: gluten-free stolen and other cakes.

Kartofellpuffer are German-style puffy potato pancakes that are similar to Jewish latkas and sold at Christmas markets like this stall at the Nuremberg Christmas Market.

Carpaccio with toasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin seed oil, mild German cheese, and wheat-rye bread is a must-try at Pilhofer in Nuremberg.

The bar inside Nurembergs Pilhofer restaurant and bed-and-breakfast, opened as a spice market in 1646.