Christmas is heeeeere!!!
How to read this post: Por favor, put your headphones on, click here and continue reading.
In case my introduction wasn’t clear enough, I LOVE Navidad. Always have, always will. Parents stressing out about Christmas shopping, cookies, the abuelas fighting over who’s coming over to dinner and who’s not, turkeys, Christmas trees, carols/villancicos… Even stress is merry during this season!
“Mijita, one of the most important things in life are traditions.” One of my abuelita’s favourite sentences until this day. I never really understood the real meaning of this until I met my esposo. When you start a family it’s important to find a balance between old family traditions and new ones. Living in Europe made it kinda hard to keep certain family traditions, but on the bright side we started finding our very own ones. My husband loves Christmas too (of course not as much as I do because well, even my shampoo is christmasy let’s leave it at that) so in the Villalmeida family (my esposo and me) we have some very strict Christmas traditions. It starts in November (hey don’t judge!) with “El Señor de los Anillos” (Lord of the Rings) and Harry Potter. It involves hot cocoa, a big alpaca blanket, a lot of popcorn. At some point between Frodo, Mordor and Hogwarts there’s always a Christmas explosion at our home: Navidad en la kitchen, navidad en el bathroom, navidad en las pijamas.. . By the first snow we switch to the classic “Home Alone” movies and we take out our fondue set. Fondue, vino, amigos & board games are a must in winter.
A new tradition of ours is visiting as many Weihnachtsmärkte as possible every Christmas season. In München every neighbourhood has its own little Weihnachtsmarkt. This year our first stop was the main market in Marienplatz. It’s full of tourists but since I like them, no problemo there.
Here you can find a lot of Bavarian souvenirs and, since we’ll be home for Christmas, it’s perfect to buy some for the familia especially for the mamá, the tía or the abuelita. If you are looking for maaaaanly presents for the papá and the abuelo go take a look at Manufactum, I’ll judge you if can’t find something there! Buy some Maronen while you are at Viktualienmarkt, the ones here are the best.
Before the Maronen get cold, take a walk down the shopping street, everything is so “weihnachtlich” and warm it’ll put you in a good mood.
After spending the money that you don’t have, head back home, put on your warm Christmas socks, continue watching your favorite Christmas movie and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Ecuador in Munich 