Welcome To Texas: Grapevine, The Christmas Capital
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GRAPEVINE (CBS 11 NEWS) - If you are hoping to find the Christmas spirit this year, look no further than Grapevine, Texas. We visited recently and found out there is a reason it's the "Christmas Capital of Texas."
The cry of "All aboard" rings out from the platform of the North Pole Express, and excited kids and families board the train in Grapevine. It's all about getting into the Christmas spirit.
Some kids are return passengers on the train. "I like the songs that they play inside with the carolers. And they give you a lot of stuff when you finish and before you finish. So you look forward to this? Yeah," said Alexander Valero. It's about a 45-minute train trip that will have kids believing.
If you are looking to warm up on cold day, Vetro Glassblowing has you covered. There you can help make your own ornament. The 2,400-degree furnace really heats up the shop. So these guys say they pay attention to the weather. "I'm always looking at Lisa Villegas for the weather forecast to make sure it's not to hot and humid," said Spencer Crouch the shop forman and as it turns out avid CBS 11 viewer. He helped guide me through the process. "Man, you are a professional, " Crouch told me. Trust me he was being kind. He made the process painless, fun, and in the end, what a great souvenir.
If all that works up an appetite. You may want to head up main street to Tolbert's for a bowl of chili. There is a saying if you don't know Tolbert's, you don't know beans about chili.
"It goes way back. My father Frank X. Tolbert is the godfather of the chili cookoffs. He wrote a book 'a bowl of red.'" said Kathleen Tolbert Ryan the owner of Tolberts Restaurant. Her father, Frank Tolbert, helped found the Terlingua Chili cook off. and this bowl of red gets my blue ribbon.
And what would a trip to Grapevine be without some wine. As Grapevine grows so does the number of wineries.
"It's boomed quite a bit, the wine industry here. A couple of years ago there were only five or six. Now there are 10 on the street," said Jessica McVey from behind the bar at Umbra Winery.
That is just a taste of some of the 1,400 events Grapevine has to offer during 40 days of the Christmas season.
"This is the place to come and create lifetime Christmas memories," said Leigh Lyons, the Grapevine Convention & Visitors Bureau Director of Communications.
Grapevine is on track for another great Christmas, so don't miss out.
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