We left our hotel and on our way to Indiana. Seeing lots of yummy looking farmstands, we decided to stop and this one had a giant peach. We pulled into the Big Peach farm stand and they had some great stuff in there. Unfortunately, we couldn’t buy too much but Tom picked out some “non-perfect” peaches that looked near perfect and got a whole lot of them for a cheap price. Needless to say, we ate a bunch of peaches over the next 2 days! 🙂
Onward to the town with the great name – Santa Claus, IN. If you know me, I love Christmastime. I love the joy and excitement. I love the feeling of seeing Christmas trees and just about everything! Our first stop in this cool town was not (to my kids disappointment) the holiday-themed amusement park but the Christmas Museum & Village. It’s a free museum and rather small but packed with some local goodies and lots of holiday fun. A walk next door in the old Santa Claus Post Office which you can go into and write a letter to Santa and he will write back! Pretty cool! There is a huge stone statue of a jolly Saint Nicholas up to the hill and a cool place to take pictures.
A short bit up the road is the shopping center and there, of course, is a Christmas Store. It is huge and filled with decorations and ornaments! They have a candy shop with fresh fudge too!. I saw a room where Santa would sit. There was a camera set-up and I went to see what it would look like (back to chair area). I hear a ‘HoHoHO!” and whipped around! I had no clue the “Santa” in the corner was real! I thought he was a fake guy there! WOW! That surprised me! Well, he spoke with the kids for a bit and they took a photo we bought.
We then headed down the road to Santa’s Candy Castle. It’s a giant candy store and fudge shop. Cool photo ops outside and maybe the candy would have thrilled us more if hadn’t been to many candy places already. 🙂 It does have a huge room with kids Christmas books that one can buy all year long. I saw this and thought of my friend, Jamie, and how he needs his holiday book there! It’d sell great!! Anyway, worth a stop and I have read (and saw in person their frozen hot cocoa is amazing but we couldn’t justify the cost and my kids don’t share liquids. They think it’s gross. Oh well.
We wanted enough time to arrive at our hotel. If the kids thought other Drury hotels were nice… We stayed at the Drury Plaza Hotel in Franklin, TN (outside of Nashville). It was a high-end Drury (but same food). It was amazing! The room was spacious and one of the best-kept rooms I have ever been in. The view was stunning as I watched the sunrise over the mountains from bed. So yes, we ate dinner and snacks here. We ate breakfast as well (yum). The staff is super amazing and friendly too. The pool was great and they had a high hot tub/spa and the pool was half inside/half outside which my kids thought was the coolest thing ever! There is a MAJOR downfall to this hotel people need to be aware of, it is SUPER pet-friendly! There was a huge golden in the lobby and one at a dinner table (eww!).. I was stuck in an elevator with one (I am highly allergic), and it seemed they were everywhere! I love animals and all but I have stayed in “pet-friendly” hotels before but this was kind of nuts! And a dog near food? Is that even legal? So while this place is extremely awesome, the dog-thing totally ruined so much of the experience for me and Cole. (I am a crazy cat lady but I wouldn’t want a cat I didn’t know near my food either – so it’s not that i dislike dogs, I promise).
