Twelve Dates of Christmas: Date 2 {Holiday Train!}

Our second date was one I've been planning for years. Every December, the CTA has a crazy festive holiday train that goes all over Chicago, bring major amounts of Christmas cheer. I've seen it from a distance, but have never had the chance to actually take a ride. This year I decided not to leave it up to chance, and to coordinate our travel times so we just HAD to jump on board!

Really, our date plan was to go see a movie. But the 20 or so minutes on the train was enough excitement to keep me going for at least the night, if not the whole weekend! There were lots of families crammed on to the train, plus enough adults who were equally caught up in the experience.

Everything on the train is Christmas themed. The seats are Christmas print, the rails are like candy canes, and there is tinsel everywhere. There are CTA employees dressed as elves at each door, greeting everyone and handing out candy canes. The whole thing is just too cute.

It's not just festive inside the train, either. Santa actually rides outside, on his own car. Lucky for him, the weekend was really mild. I bet it gets crazy cold riding up there on a regular December night! It was so fun to catch a ride on this once a year train, and it was also great to see everyone's excitement whenever the train rolled up to a station.

When we got downtown, we found out the movie was sold out. So I convinced Joe to do what I wanted to do all along... Christkindle Market! It's an annual German style Christmas market in Daley Plaza, and it was the perfect complement to our festive ride on the Brown line.

We went ornament shopping and drank some Gluvine (hot mulled wine, German style. SO GOOD!). Since we're finally not broke this year, we bought a couple little ornaments to add to our tree. Then we wandered over to Millennium Park, to watch ice skaters and enjoy more of the mild weather. Overall, it was about as much holiday spirit as one night could handle!  Oh, then we went to Kerryman, which turns out to be a really terrible bar, where at about 10 pm it switches from Irish pub to thumpin club party spot. It was weird. There was even a line to get in as we were leaving, waiting behind a velvet rope. This is why we don't hang out in River North.

A Chicago flag for our tree

And a little love for the Germans, as well.
Or at least the Bavarians!