You’ve seen the Downtown DC Holiday Market on everyone’s Instagram stories recently: the fancy hot chocolate, giant lit up star, and hordes of people walking under strings of lights. But for all its aesthetic photo opportunities, is it really worth the trip?
First of all, getting there isn’t that hard. A straight shot on the Red Line brings you to Gallery Place, which is just a block away from the market. However, once you get there, you’re immediately assaulted by long lines and masses of people who have forgotten how to walk. If you think the Metro ride was long, just wait until you attempt to buy any warm food. That is, if you can find the end of the line because as we found, there are no lines that don’t wrap around the side of a building.
We decided to skip the lines and just look at the stores. There was a nice little puzzle shop, a cheese store, a lot of posters and paintings, and a booth titled “Friends to Lovers Romance Books.” There was a great assortment of gift-worthy items that might appeal to people with a stable income who don’t spend all their money at Whole Foods. We recommend buying gifts for your parents here, but only with the money they give you.
On our expedition through the stalls, we ran into a man. Coincidentally, he was dressed up as the Grinch. Peyton wanted a picture with the Grinch, but after a short conversation, we decided to get as far away as we could.
All the window shopping made us hungry, so we decided to return to the aforementioned food lines, and cut into the crepe line. After waiting 20 minutes to order, Jordana (still shocked that she paid so much) was glared at when she didn’t tip on the overpriced $17 crepe. Ten minutes later, we received our crepe. The man making our crepes screeched our name repeatedly when it was ready, though we were standing right in front of him. We rate the crepe 7/10. Our experience, however, was -67/10. Then we decided to get a meatball because there was no line. Unfortunately, upon ordering, we learned that there was no line because they were out of pasta, so we had to wait for it to come. By this point, we were done. When we received our singular $11 meatball and pasta, we headed back to the Metro. We were planning on eating the meatball at a table, but the tables were full, so we ate it on the Metro.
Overall, Christmas markets are great if you have money and too much time to kill waiting for food. We unfortunately have neither of these, so, to our great disappointment, we probably won’t return. At least until next year. •
