One year before our trip to Seattle and Leavenworth, I stared at the flurries drifting outside the window of our hotel in Tokyo and silently begged them to stick. It would probably mess up our plans for the day but I didn’t care. I wanted it to snow on Christmas. Despite being born and raised in Hawaii, I had spent a fair amount of Christmases in “winter wonderland” locations while growing up and yet never saw it snow on Christmas. Nor did I see it snow on Christmas during the 16 years I lived in New England.
Despite my silent request, that day in Tokyo wasn’t my lucky day either. The flurries gave way to sun and we continued with our Christmas plans without any hiccup from the weather. But from that day on, I was on a mission: experience a White Christmas. I read countless articles on the best places to experience a White Christmas. Places were selected, and then narrowed down based on distance, altitude (I tend to get altitude sickness), and extreme cold factors (the kids are definitely Hawaii babies). Finally, I landed on one place: Leavenworth, Washington (with flights into and out of Seattle).
Detailed Itinerary: Days 1-3
Below you will find the itinerary I came up with prior to our trip. I’ve notated the times where we deviated from its course and why. Normally I would delete the actual dates on the itinerary before posting, but I decided to leave it as part of the description for this trip because Leavenworth completely shut down on Christmas Day and was partially shut down on Christmas Eve. As a result, the itinerary was heavily shaped by those two days and what was open.
Friday, December 22nd – Day 1 (Seattle)
Early Morning Activities
- Arrive into SeaTac early in the morning after taking a red eye flight the night before.
- Take an Uber from SeaTac to The Charter Hotel (a Curio Collection Hotel by Hilton) (1610 2nd Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101, USA).
- Check into hotel and store luggage for the day.
Note 1: Starting from Day 3 of our itinerary, and for the remainder of our trip, we were going to be renting a car. Therefore, everything planned for in Seattle that was hard to get to without a car was moved to our return to Seattle on Day 8.
Note 2: I’ll go into the cost of our trip in a separate blog post (coming soon!), but based on a free night certificate I had, I needed to stay at a Hilton. The price of the Charter Hotel was on the cheaper end of Hilton hotels in Seattle. The cheapness actually gave me pause. After all, I had a free night stay and therefore wanted to stay at the most expensive place that I could… for free. But at the end of the day, I loved the location of The Charter Hotel in terms of the items on our itinerary and forewent getting the best deal I could find, in order to get the location I wanted for our hotel stay.
Morning/Afternoon Activities
- Time to eat! Head to Pike Place Market to eat breakfast. (My post on where we ate in Pike Place Market is coming soon!)
- Walk to the Seattle Aquarium (1483 Alaskan Way Pier 59, Seattle, WA 98101, USA).
- Walk to the Original Selfie Museum (92 Union St, Seattle, WA 98101, USA).
- Return to Pike Place Market for lunch at Oriental Mart.
- Return to hotel to rest.
Disclaimer: I loaded up our schedule in the morning because I didn’t expect our room to be ready. The last time we visited Seattle we waited in the lobby for hours for our room to be ready. I didn’t want to do that again and filled our schedule so we would have something to do. However, our room ended up being ready at 6:30 AM when we checked in, so we ended up crashing for hours, missing the aquarium and breakfast, but woke up refreshed and ready to see the sights! As a result of missing breakfast, our first stop of the day ended up being Pike Place Market for lunch before heading over to the Selfie Museum.
Evening Activities
- Visit the Sheraton Grand Seattle to see their annual Gingerbread Village (1400 6th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101, USA). There was a line but it was also free! Here are some clips of what we saw at their Willy Wonka inspired creation this year.
- Wander through Westlake Park to view the Luminous Light Sculptures.
- Walk to Pacific Place Mall in order to eat at Pike Place Chowder without standing in the crazy lines at Pike Place Market.
- Return to hotel for the night.
Saturday, December 23rd – Day 2 (Seattle)
Morning Activities
- Walk from the Charter Hotel Seattle, Curio Collection to the Pike Place Market for breakfast. (The plan was that we all would go to Pike Place Market. In reality, we sent my husband to grab food from Three Girls Bakery for us to eat in the hotel room).
- Take the Seattle Monorail from Westlake Center to Seattle Center.
- Visit the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum (305 Harrison St, Seattle, WA 98109, USA); Bought tickets in advance with a 9 AM PST entrance time.
- Walk to the nearby Seattle Children’s Museum (305 Harrison St, Seattle, WA 98109, USA). The kids could have spent all day here!
Afternoon Activities
- Take the Seattle Monorail back to Westlake Center and walk to Pike Place Market to eat lunch at Pasta Casalinga.
- Stop by Luke’s Lobster for a lobster roll (this wasn’t in the initial itinerary but I loved, loved, loved this food truck in NYC and didn’t want to miss a chance to eat one of their delicious rolls).
- Return to Charter Hotel Seattle, Curio Collection for a nap / rest.
Evening Activities
- Take the King County Bus to the Woodland Park Zoo. It was free for the kids to ride the bus and my husband and I pre-bought our round trip bus tickets on the Transit Go App.
- Experience WildLanterns at the Woodland Park Zoo, a holiday experience that runs from mid-November until mid-January. This event was sold out by the day of so make sure you buy a ticket in advance.
- Return back to hotel via the King County Bus and grab food at Chipotle Mexican Grill. (Chipotle still hasn’t made its way to Hawaii so we always try to have a meal here when traveling.)
Sunday, December 24th – Day 3 (Seattle-to-Downtown Leavenworth)
Morning Activities
- Preorder a bunch of items from Piroshky Piroshky. Have a couple piroshky for breakfast and save the rest as our “go to” snack for the rest of the trip.
- Pick up an SUV from National Car Rental (1601 3rd Ave, Seattle WA 98101 USA), a quick walk from our hotel.
- Check out of hotel and load up the car for our trek out to Leavenworth.
Note 3: I had heard that Stevens Pass (I-5) was a beautiful drive and had been excited to see it. However, there was a lot of construction on the day we drove out to Leavenworth from Seattle, so we took I-90 instead and only took Steven’s Pass on the way back to Seattle. Having experienced both, I will say I-90 is definitely the way to go. Was it as pretty? No. Does that really matter when you have antsy kids in the car? Not to us. Let’s just say we are still many years out from the day where we can take family vacations where the trip is the journey and not the destination. When mapping the two routes, they look the same. However, on I-5 if you get behind a slow vehicle, it can significantly add to your commuting time.
If you liked this post, maybe you would like these posts from Hawaii Girl Travels:
Our 8-Day Itinerary to Seattle and Leavenworth: Downtown Leavenworth, Days 3-6
Check out Destinations to see all the other places I’ve talked about.