The Empire Winter Village

It's becoming somewhat of a tradition to visit the Empire Hotel just before Christmas, to see their Winter Village. This year was the 3rd time we've been, two years ago we went with Grandma and Granddad and last year with the Roses.

Last night we had a very lovely time there together with the Grants. The kids enjoyed decorating a couple of gingerbread men and then ate them together with some hot chocolate - we took some photos and ooohed and aaahed over the "snowfall", and... that was about it!
To be fair, not much else is very Christmassy here, so we take what we get!

I do think though, that a 5-star hotel should maybe make a bit more effort, and not just re-use the same decorations every year... The tree this year was full of butterflies, again. Sure it was pretty, but couldn't they have come up with something new?





Giant baubles were hanging from the ceiling in the atrium, it looked lovely! Probably the same ones as last year though... (Although then they were in gold.)



This part of the Winter Village was new though! This is where the snow came down this year, and with quite a lot of imagination it felt nearly real!



Very concentrated designing their gingerbread men...



Mallory decided that she wanted to do a whole gingerbread house, little did her mum know that it needed assembling too... Ha ha!





Mallory wasn't all convinced her mummy was doing a very good job, "I want to do a cookiiiiieee instead..."



So Linnea to the rescue, "Now look here Mallory, we can do this, and attach that and...!" Good team work girls!



Kim and I.





The chocolate fountain, a must!



Anyway, even though I personally think they could expand this idea and do so much more for their guests and visitors - it's still something nice to do with the kids in the run up to Christmas, all to get in the Christmas spirit!