Cruisin' with Santa and the Traugers

You may remember that last year we rode the Santa train and had a great time. This year as I was looking around to see what was available and perhaps buy tickets for the train again, I came across an activity I had not heard of called Cruisin' with Santa. This is an activity that you buy tickets for and do in Old Town Alexandria. It is sponsored by The Christmas Attic and the Potomac River Company. I invited our dear friends the Traugers to join us and we met there at 11:30 AM.
It was a bit chaotic to get there because The Scottish Parade was going on at that exact time and they had all these streets blocked off. I was nervous that we wouldn't make it and they would start the fun without us. I shouldn't have been so nervous because it all worked out.
When we got to the Christmas Attic, which was the starting point, they had hot cocoa, cookies and snacks for the kids and a goodie bag for all of us. The goodie bags were great because they included a Christmas ornament for each of us, a pencil, a penguin finger puppet, a top, a kaleidoscope, coupons and a sticker.Then we were greeted by an elf and began a scavenger hunt through Old Town that would eventually lead us to Santa and the boat where we would take our cruise across the river to National Harbor. The first stop was the Virginia shop - super cute, small ad had some fun trinkets. The girls were supposed to say to the shop clerk, "Hi, we're cruisin' with Santa" and then they would get a treat. They got a chocolate coin at the first stop.The second stop was at the new Virginia Museum in Old Town which was a cute place. They got peppermint candy and had some time to look around. Jasmine even got dressed up in some Colonial digs and sung her rendition of God Bless America on a little stage they had there. Super Cute! Also, we met Patrick Henry and got our pic taken with him.The last stop was inside the Torpedo Factory which now houses several art galleries. They got candy canes there and we walked around looking at the art. Jasmine had a great time an she was excited for each new thing we did.We then made our way to the boat and met Santa there! How fun! Since our crowd was small (maybe about 6 kids total), Santa got to spend a lot of quality time with the kids, especially the Campbell and Trauger girls (they were the most enchanting). He read them stories and sat with them on the floor and sang some Christmas Carols. He even let the girls try on his hat. The girls loved it and you could have heard a pin drop when Santa was reading the Christmas stories.We got to National Harbor about 20 minutes later and the girls bid farewell to Santa. National Harbor is just over the Wilson Bridge in Maryland and it is a huge commercial and residential building project that has been going on for a few years. There is a massive hotel there called The Gaylord Hotel and we went in there first and took pictures and had lunch at a cute sports pub.Then we wandered around outside looking at all the development they have done there. They have a lot of high-end shops and they had an outdoor market going on. We saw the massive tree they had and the statue of the Awakening which they moved there from DC.After spending most of the day together it was time to go back and so we rode the water taxi back to Old Town and bid farewell to each other as snow started falling (too bad it didn't stick). It was an amazing time spent with amazing friends. I can't wait to do this again next year, it was great!