December Nights

Tonight we went to December Nights at Balboa Park. (Formerly known as Christmas at the Prado.) This happens the first Friday and Saturday in December every year. This used to be more of a community holiday celebration. They used to have carolers, singing groups, bell ringers and other performing groups as well as multicultural performances and goodies. Now it has turned into a secondary county fair with a few Christmas carols on the speakers. Two years ago (our official first date) we tried to go there, but the traffic was so bad that we gave up and went to Horton Plaza and went ice skating on their outdoor rink instead. As you can see this adventure was a success in many ways :) **For single guys, take note; ice skating on an outdoor rink is romantic and encourages the girl to hold your hand...or else fall on her butt.

Well today we made it there and boy was it crowded! We had to park really far away and take the trolley to the park. The line for the trolley was about 45 minutes long. When we finally got on, the driver said yesterday there was an estimated 147,000 people. I'm thinking there were probably that many if not more tonight. We walked all over everywhere and at one point looked out from a top view and saw a massive crowd. We stopped and got pansit, lumpia, rice, and a chicken thingy from the house of the Philippines. Peter got Perogies (potato and cheese dumplings) from the house of Poland. To top it all off we shared a strawberry funnel cake from one of the booths. It was great. We also went inside the model train museum. This was probably the best part. Trains, trains, trains and more trains. It's a loooooong track. They had a children's section with Lego trains. Peter thought the Lego cows grazing were pretty funny. It is 28,000 sq feet-the largest operating model train museum-basically the equivalent a supermarket. It was pretty cool!