A Little Merry Christmas on City Market

The Princess and I visited Roanoke City Market this afternoon, following a rare visit to church (extremely rare for me, as it were). Afterwards, we found a delightful, if seriously reduced, time to be had on the Market. It is Dickens of a Christmas time and it was the dickens finding the Christmas tree displays at the Hotel Roanoke. 

The Hotel's tree displays are famous far and wide--much like the annual Christmas competitions at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, but, sadly, this year there were few trees. The ones on display were creative and fun, so we made do with what we had. There were other distractions and we indulged completely, as you can see in the following photos.

A visit to the Taubman Museum of Art gave Linda some great ideas for details in the new novel she's working on. That was unexpected. 

Perhaps the most surprising fun we had was posing with Doug and Brenda Saball in the lobby of the hotel, thinking they were the hired Santa and Mrs. Claus, then finding out they were just Roanokers enjoying the Christmas spirit. They make a great Christmas pair.

Here's what much of it looked like.

L.L. Bean, the shoemaker, had its Bootmobile on display.

The theme here is "Oz" and that's witch Linda on her bike racing the tornado.

The Princess on the Yellow Brick Road.

All kinds of balls, but no blue ones.

When I was a kid, this was the kind of Christmas tree lights we used. A little smaller, maybe.

Linda loved the elaborate swan decoration.

The Princess, Santa and me. Who has the best beard? (Hint: me.)

The Princes snugs up to Santa.

Doug and Linda, the real Claus couple.