When I moved to San Diego in the fall of 2004, friends recommended going to "Christmas on the Prado" at Balboa Park. It did not disappoint! One of the highlights was watching the San Diego Civic Youth Ballet dance selections from The Nutcracker. When you hear the familiar music and see the talented young dancers on pointe performing "The Waltz of the Flowers" and "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," it just feels like Christmas.
The annual event has been renamed "December Nights" since then, but it is still the same magical experience. You'll see a huge Christmas tree lit up behind the choirs and singers performing at the organ pavilion. You can walk past scenes from the nativity. There is free access to the museums. The International Cottages serve up unique cultural foods from around the the world. (This always reminds me of Epcot Center's World Showcase.) If you go with a sweetheart, be on the lookout for vendors selling mistletoe!
Word to the wise about parking: it is horrendous. If you go during the day on Saturday, you might have a chance to find a spot in one of the few free parking lots nearby. But if you go during prime time at night, forget about it. In recent years, the area has been so jammed with traffic that organizers recommend parking downtown at Petco Park for $5 and taking a shuttle. That is good advice!
5 comments:
I took our two daughters to see the Nutcracker at Christmas during the time they were in ballet. We loved it and for a time had an ornament to represent it on our tree.
Mmmm...mistletoe.
Balboa Park parking is crazy on the busy days, so I can imagine why that advice is given!
That (December Nights - or Christmas on the Prado as I'll probably always call it!) used to be one of my very favorite things!
I hadn't been in ages and went several years ago. HOLY. Cow.
Thankfully we had taken the trolley from M.V. to Little Italy where they had buses up to Balboa Park. But I couldn't believe how crazy it was! I think we stood in line for food at two places (and really had wanted to get more from other places) but it was so crazy that was all we could handle. We picked the least interesting museum thinking it'd be the least crowded, and finally, when we walked down to the fountain by Ruben H. Fleet, and saw a literal mass sea of people all the way across the bridge over the 163, we decided that it was the wrong place for two introverts and it was time to go. Ha ha.
But I have very fond memories of it and wish it hadn't gotten QUITE so popular ;-)
Have you ever been to Epcot's Food and Wine Festival? It's like the perfect blend of what the hospitality houses do, but without the crazy crowds. And everything was like $2-5 and they had between 3-10 or so food choices at each country to get (and reasonable sizes so you could eat your way around the world!) and typically about that many drink choices (alcoholic and not, though most were).
What was really cool was they added in about 12 more countries between each country in world showcase (obviously smaller things) and so it was a fun additional bonus. The "regular" countries typically featured at least little bits of some of what you could eat at the sit-down restaurants (the beer cheese soup in Canada, some sort of tagine and mint tea in Morocco, etc.) - which I'm sure bumps up their business longer term when people visit Epcot.
I'd love to intentionally plan visits to Epcot around it...it was SO fun (and really was reminiscent of Christmas on the Prado). Plus it runs for about a month and largely into October when it's not so hot and humid, but still nice and warm, and everyone is back in school so it was quite empty!
Since I know you also like Disney (and now knowing you like this too...and also Epcot's World Showcase) I had to tell you! :-)
D.G. - What a great family memory! Must have been so magical for them to see it while they were taking ballet ( :
Milo - Memories... ( ;
Susan - Finding parking is the only downside of the event.
Leese - Thank you so much for sharing about the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot! It sounds amazing ( : Not a huge crowd person myself either, so the atmosphere you described is perfect.
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