Leavenworth, December 2008

Last year when we went to Leavenworth for the annual Christmas Lighting ceremony we booked our hotel for this year. Normally you must do this a year in advance as it is a busy time, with lots of tourists in town.

Leavenworth is a small Bavarian themed village in the Cascades. During the year they have many festivals including Maifest, Autumn Leaf Festival, Oktoberfest as well as the Christmas Lighting Festival. The Christmas Festival is every weekend in December up until Christmas.

There has been a lot of snow in Seattle this year and it has been very cold. Doug and I both were concerned about the passes and were considering canceling, or finding another means to get to Leavenworth. We contacted Amtrak and decided to go on the bus through Amtrak. It would get us to town about noon on Friday, and we would leave at 9am on Sunday.


We got downtown Seattle early Friday morning and boarded the bus. The weather was snowing and threatening even more. We were glad to have someone else do the driving for us. It was a pretty ride going over the Cascades with all the snow. We went across Steven’s Pass rather than Blewett Pass. We got into town as expected around noon, and walked the 3 blocks or so and checked into the Enzian Inn, where we had stayed last year.
Once we got our things into our room we walked across the street to the main part of town. There was a lot of snow, but it was sunny. We shopped a little then stopped at We joined others in the lobby for caroling with the pianist, and then I went swimming before we turned in for the night. In the morning we had breakfast at the hotel, which is included. Of course there was the ceremony of the owner waking up the town with the Alphorn, as is the custom every morning. There was fresh snow and it really is pretty to see the mountains and hills around the town covered in snow.

After breakfast we headed back over to the town square and as the day went on there were more and more people coming into town. Several tour companies have bus trips to Leavenworth just for the day so it can become very crowded. Then we received a call from Amtrak that due to the weather there would be no buses on Sunday. We called our hotel to make sure we would be able to stay an additional night, which was no problem.

At 4:30 the actually Lighting Ceremony starts with several choirs in the Gazebo, welcoming of St Nick, and a speech by one of the town leaders. Finally at 5:30 they count down and suddenly all the lights in town come on, one by one. It is fun to watch the town light up.

After the ceremony we headed over to Fest Hall which is the town hall. They were doing a reenactment of the story of Christmas, hosted by one of the churches in town. After the play, we went to Gustav’s for dinner, then back to the hotel for more caroling and swimming.

On Sunday morning we had breakfast then went over to the town; however a lot of the stores open late so it was pretty quiet. Also, the festivities are scheduled for Friday and Saturday so there wasn’t much going on. We headed back and I was able to swim and relax so we spent most of the day resting. We had dinner next door at Kristall’s, and then settled in early. Monday morning the hotel staff offered to drive us the several blocks down to the bus stop so we wouldn’t have to drag our suitcases in the snow. It was still quite cold. The bus came late and there was a lot of confusion over who was riding since they had to double up on the trips and take several people from the day before. We didn’t have a problem however, so we were able to get a seat. We were home by 3pm, and saw that Seattle also had gotten a lot of snow.

While we were in Leavenworth we booked for next year. Hopefully there won’t be as much snow!