Christkindlemarket Chicago at the Daley Plaza

 

Every year my husband and I partake in one of the best Chicago Christmas Traditions – Christkindlemarket Chicago! This year I wanted to write up a quick lil blurb about this fun event the city hosts.

A brief history about the outdoor can be found here on the site’s website, but an overview is that it’s based off the original Christkindlmarket, an outdoor holiday market, in Nuremberg, Germany. The festival runs from Nov 20 – December 24 2015 from 11 am to 8 pm Sunday through Thursday and 11 am to 9 pm Friday & Saturday (with special Thanksgiving Day & Christmas Eve hours).

At the market, you can peruse adorable shops with handcrafted gifts like ornaments and nutcrackers, indulge in traditional German cuisine (like warm giant soft pretzels) OR sip the delicious Glühwein out of the annual collector’s mug! I am not going to lie to you – the Glühwein, hot spiced German wine, is the reason why my husband and I attend every year. We collect the mugs the wine comes in. This tradition was actually started by my husband’s brother and his girlfriend. They live out in LA, but every time they came for the holidays they made a point to visit the market, shop and grab some wine along with the collectors mug. One year, we were like umm we live in Chicago and don’t even do this and decided we needed to go! Ever since then, it’s been our thing as well. Some years we need to drink some extra wine because his brother and brother’s GF can’t make it to Chicago, so we get mugs to send to them so they never miss a year in their collection. This year when we visited we picked up bag of  warm roasted nuts from Sweet Swabian. They were sooooo tasty, and I highly recommend them!! The market isn’t just for Glühwein drinking. It’s very family friendly, too. They even have a special kids collector mug you can get filled with hot chocolate – this years was a snowman and reminded me of Olaf.

This is a fun, great holiday tradition in Chicago. Whether you are visiting, a transplant or native, it’s definitely something you should consider visiting. I know, we will continue this one for as long as possible!

Peace out,

Wet Hair, Don’t Care

P.S. This was the first year the weather was amazing (usually we freeeze our booties off, and above is a picture of the sunset I took from my office building before we left).