Hello lovely readers! Wow there are a lot of you! I can’t believe that I am coming up on two years of having this blog and sharing my life with you! I love having this digital diary to look back on and remember all the fun adventures, special moments, and little details that I otherwise probably wouldn’t remember quite the same. Just like this one! Alec surprised me and told me he was taking me to Leavenworth, WA for the weekend! It is about a three hour drive through the mountain pass until you come upon this small Bavarian village settled in between the mountains. Truly, it feels like you are in Germany. Actually I think it has been tagged as the most authentic Bavarian town in the country and it is deemed the most Christmas-y town in the country so….good timing to visit! We also arrived on the last weekend of the Christmas Lighting Festival where they make a big shindig and light up all the street lights, buildings, and trees at once. Very cool and I highly recommend visiting when you can see the lights. However, I wouldn’t say that you necessarily have to go during the lighting weekends because the lights stay up through Valentine’s Day and it was PACKED. Seattle sends buses of people for the day to view the lighting festival and while it was neat to see them all come on at once, we were packed into the streets like sardines and there were FIVE HOUR WAITS for dinner restaurants afterwards!!
We stayed at the Enzian Inn and LOVED IT. It is an older hotel but they have kept it updated and it is so darn charming and authentic and the beds were SO comfortable!! They have a complimentary breakfast for their guests every morning with fresh baked pastries (that smell like Christmas morning) and an omelet station. Then, it’s their tradition to play the alphorn on the deck every morning at 8:15 and 9:15. That was super cool. They had board games you could take to play in the lobby or back to your room, an indoor and outdoor pool, fresh coffee, tea, and cider in the lobby and live piano music at night by the fire. It all just felt so authentic and cozy, I loved it.
As far as food goes, I had enough bratwurst, beer, and, schnitzel to last me for awhile. That is some heavy food! We went to Munchen Haus for our first lunch and got THREE brats and a pretzel and beers 🍻 We got the currywurst brat which Alec loved, a traditional Big Bob Bratwurst, and my Polish sausage Kelbassi. We also got their big soft pretzel with cheese sauce and it was 😍. We also went back that night at like 10pm to get late night brats because they were so yummy!! HOWEVER, I literally had one of the best meals of my life in Leavenworth at a place called Andreas Keller Restaurant. This was one of the places with a five hour wait so on our last day, we stood outside the door for about 40 minutes to be one of the first ones in for lunch. Their Weiner schnitzel was so incredibly tender and just melted in your mouth, the brewskis were light, but the real zinger was their pretzel with the cheese sauce. This sauce was like nothing I have eaten before. After I finished the pretzel, I was literally scooping the cheese out with a FORK INTO MY MOUTH. I literally don’t even know how to describe it but I told Alec it is in the top 4 things I’ve ever eaten. I promise I’m not overhyping it. Book a trip and go get yo self some cheese sauce.
We spent a lot of time walking around the village and going into all the fun shops. Like I mentioned, it was VERY crowded so everything was pretty packed, like there were lines just to get into stores. So thankfully, Alec pre-booked us a little excursion to the Leavenworth Reindeer Farm!! This was definitely the most fun thing we did and you HAVE to go here (after you eat the cheese sauce). It was only $15 a person and it was a whole experience. You go in and you can feed these turkeys and chickens walking all around the farm, they had fresh cider and cocoa and cookies for you, they had a big bonfire set up outside where they talk to you about reindeer and you can hold antlers and horns, and then they take you through a serious of gates to the reindeer where you can feed them and then take a picture with big mama reindeer, Elsa. lol. Honestly it was a little scary because these antlers are no joke and they warned us to watch our eyes and cover the little kids faces. And to top it all off, then they bring out SANTA. This Santa was a homie because 1. He basically had a Santa WWE belt on and I told him I was impressed and 2. I asked Santa what HE wants for Christmas, and he said SOME PEACE AND QUIET I kid you not!!!!
The last day it snowed and it was so magical and Alec got some awesome drone footage. It was just a really really nice getaway and it really got us even more into the holiday spirit. I highly recommend making a trip to Leavenworth if you have the chance. I would suggest 2-3 days for a visit. We were there for about 2 and I feel like we pretty much covered everything we wanted to. Okay, that’s all for me! xoxo
Heather Fern 