Pictures of Downtown Leavenworth at Christmastime were the jumping off point for planning our entire Christmas trip to Washington. The final itinerary looked nothing like what the original plans had been. An Amtrak ride from Seattle turned into a drive in a rental car. A full week downtown was shortened to allow time in both Seattle and the outskirts of Leavenworth. Regardless of the changes, our visit to Downtown Leavenworth was such a magical part of the trip and turned out even better than I expected.

Detailed Itinerary: Days 3-6

Our detailed itinerary is below. I’ve notated where we deviated from the planned itinerary and why. Normally I would delete the actual dates on an itinerary before posting, but I decided to leave the dates on for this trip because Leavenworth completely shut down on Christmas Day and was partially shut down on Christmas Eve, and this itinerary was heavily shaped by those two days and what was open.

Sunday, December 24th – Day 3 (Seattle-to-Downtown Leavenworth)

Morning Activities

• Check out of our Seattle hotel and load up the car for our trek out to Leavenworth. Click here for a write-up of our first couple of days in Seattle.
• Take I-90 to Leavenworth.

Note: I had heard that Stevens Pass (I-5) was a beautiful drive and I was 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.

Afternoon Activities

• Check into the Enzian Inn in Leavenworth (590 Highway 2 Leavenworth, WA 98826).
• Walk into town to view the “Village of Lights”. There are a lot of festivities in the downtown pedestrian walkway. Unfortunately for us, these events finished by early afternoon on December 24th, so we just missed it all. However, the area was still gorgeous to behold.
• Eat dinner at Andreas Keller Restaurant (829 Front St, Leavenworth, WA 98826).

Dining Issues on Christmas Eve

We never ended up eating at Andreas Keller. Unlike many other restaurants that were closed all day, Andreas Keller was actually open on Christmas Eve, albeit only for limited hours. Considering that Andreas Keller kept popping up in my searches as one of the “must eat at restaurants” in Leavenworth, I was excited to plan to have Christmas Eve dinner there. While Andreas Keller does not take reservations, they do have a waitlist system that sends updates to your phone. The plan was to put our name on the waitlist as soon as we got settled in to our hotel at Leavenworth.

Since our room wasn’t ready at the Enzian Inn when we first arrived, we hung around enjoying the cozy lobby. Once we were told our room was ready, we unloaded the car and unpacked before heading into the village. This was a mistake in terms at trying to score dinner reservations at Andreas Keller. By the time we made it to the restaurant, they were closing in 4 hours and the waitlist was over 100 parties long.

Needless to say, we never got called back by Andreas Keller. This left us with only one option available: the food stalls at Front Street Park.

A better plan

If I could redo our plans, I would have left the husband and kids back at the hotel to wait out the room and walked over the Andreas Keller to put my name on the waitlist. It probably would have taken me no more than 30 minutes as Enzian Inn is very close to the downtown pedestrian area.

The dining options at the food stalls were similar to what you would find at a fair. Yes, the food served were mostly fried and greasy, with nary a vegetable in sight, but the kids and I love that kind of food anyway. However, since more restaurants were open on Christmas Eve than on Christmas Day, I would have tried to eat at a restaurant on Christmas Eve and saved the food stalls for Christmas Day.

Monday, December 25th – Day 4 (Downtown Leavenworth)

Morning Activities

• Eat breakfast at the Enzian Inn.

One of the great things about this hotel was the (free) delicious full breakfast they offered each morning, including on Christmas Day. The spread was out of this world, with a made-to-order omelet station, an entire table dedicated to pastries and cakes, pancakes, sausages, an assortment of cereals, and oatmeal and a hot chocolate bar that my son went crazy over. But the coolest thing to me was the Alpine Horn blower that serenaded the guests!

• Play in the snow.

Hallelujah! I didn’t think this part of the itinerary would happen when we drove into town the day before. Instead of a winter wonderland to greet us upon our arrival, we were met by barren grassy areas. But the snow started falling on Christmas day, gifting me with my first ever white Christmas and covered everything in a layer of white.

• Eat lunch at the food stalls on Front Street.

Afternoon Activities

• Ride the alpine coaster at the Leavenworth Adventure Park.

This was my big goof of the trip. I had been so excited. Finally, something that was open on Christmas Day. The entire family spent hours (okay, more like minutes) pouring over videos of the coaster. I eagerly bought 2 rounds on the coaster for each of us to ride right after lunch. Or I thought I did. On Christmas Day I started searching my emails and couldn’t find the tickets anyway. I pulled my credit card statement to see if I could beg for a ticket reprinting after showing proof of purchase, and it didn’t look like I was ever charged for the rides. Somehow I hadn’t actually purchased the rides, and by the day of, they were completely sold out. They were actually sold out for several days after Christmas as well so we didn’t end up going to the park at all.

Moral of the story, get your tickets early for this one.

Evening Activities

• Eat dinner at Wok About Grill, a Mongolian BBQ restaurant. Every year the town of Leavenworth puts out a list of restaurants that are open on Christmas. This year the list included approximately 3 restaurants. We stopped in at the first restaurant at 5 PM and were told that they were not taking any more customers since they were already sold out of food. The next two restaurants we tried had signs up that pretty much stated, “sorry we changed our minds and are closed.” But one of those closed restaurants had a second sign up as well, a sign that said that Wok About Grill had decided to remain open. My second Christmas miracle! The waitlist for Wok About Grill ended up being two hours long but we finally got to eat a delicious meal.

Tuesday, December 26th – Day 5 (Downtown Leavenworth)

Morning Activities

• Enjoy another delicious breakfast at the Enzian Inn.
• More playing in the snow! The original itinerary had us spending the morning shopping in Leavenworth village, but since a lot more snow had fallen overnight, the kids were eager to go back to the park we had played at the day before and get more snow-time fun in.
• Hallelujah the restaurants reopen! Grab coffee at J5 Coffee and lunch at Yodelin Broth (reservations made in advance through their website).

Afternoon Activities

• Even more playing in the snow.

This trip was my 4-year-old’s first time seeing snow and while my 9-year-old daughter played in snow when she was 6 months old, she obviously didn’t remember her previous experience. Needless to say, even the lightest covering of snow was a delight to my kids. However, if snow wasn’t such a novelty for them, I think they would have been a little bored with the plans I made to keep us in downtown Leavenworth for so long.

• Eat dinner at Mozart’s Restaurant (reservations made in advance through their website) and enjoy some ice cream at Whistlepunk Ice Cream Co. afterwards.

Wednesday, December 27th – Day 6 (Downtown Leavenworth)

Morning Activities

• Enjoy one last breakfast at the Enzian Inn.
• Visit Downtown Leavenworth for the final time.
• Enjoy the small sledding hill at Front Street Park.

My original plans were to hold off on sledding while in downtown since there was a much more impressive hill that we’d be visiting later on during the trip. But turns out that while I was turning up my nose on the smaller hill, my kids were drooling and dreaming of their own runs down the same hill.

• Visit The Gingerbread Factory and The Cheesemonger’s Shop, amongst others, and picked up food for the rest of our stay.
• Enjoy lunch at the Rhein Haus
• Check out of Enzian Inn

A Thought on Timing

When I first planned our trip to Leavenworth, I wanted to spend 5 days in the downtown Leavenworth area. I was quickly dissuaded of this plan in March when I went to book our hotel reservations and found that there were not that many hotel options available. Furthermore, the hotel options that did have availability did not have the best reviews. By decreasing our dates to only 3 days, I had much more options available. I thought it was strange that the crowds would pick up AFTER Christmas, until I realized how many stores and restaurants were closed. (I’m all for people getting to enjoy time off for work, but living in a tourist destination myself, this concept of closing during the holidays was just very foreign to me. The restaurants in Honolulu definitely stay open on Christmas, and most of them spike the prices for their special “Christmas buffet”.)

Things I would change

While I loved being in the downtown area on Christmas and adored the Enzian Inn, if I were to plan this trip again I would to do the following:

1. Reserve my hotel room an entire year in advance. I learned that many Leavenworth hotels release their booking dates 1-year in advance, and they are quickly booked up during the holidays.
2. Visit downtown Leavenworth after Christmas, when the restaurants are open. Two days would have been enough days to spend there as well.
3. Visit the outer Leavenworth area (and stay in an Air B&B) during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The kids would have loved to spend full days playing in the much deeper snow. And we could either have cooked our own food or there were restaurants that were open for pick up orders only. Since those options required an oven, it wasn’t an option for us. (Post coming soon on our itinerary to the outer Leavenworth area.)

If you liked this post, maybe you would like these posts from Hawaii Girl Travels:

Our 8-Day Itinerary to Seattle and Leavenworth: Seattle, Days 1-3

Check out Destinations to see all the other places I’ve talked about.