Some people love tradition. Especially around the holidays. Putting up the Christmas Tree, adding lights to the house, spending a year hoarding gifts that will look perfect under the tree. For some of us though… Christmas isn’t meant for traditions. Some of us want to get away and spend Christmas in Galveston.

If you want to get away for any type of holiday, it’s important to remember that a lot of places are going to be closed. We tend to accidentally travel out of town on holiday weekends and then walk around going “oh dear, we didn’t think this through”.

This time? We thought it through.

Here are my favorite tips for exploring a new city when things might be closed, the best way to prepare for it, and things on Galveston Island that ARE open for Christmas and worth doing.

Galveston is a city that sits right on the coast of Texas, just south of Houston.
It’s easy to get to, and great to explore.

ACCOMODATIONS

You have a few options for places to stay. A hotel, or something privately owned like an Airbnb.
While traveling on a holiday, you can’t expect any restaurants to be open. Sometimes they are open, sometimes there’s a 3 hour wait or reservations only because they’re the ONLY place open.

Either way, it’s always best to play it safe and find accommodations that have at least some type of small kitchen or way to cook.
We went with an Airbnb for this reason.

Once you have that narrowed down, you can choose between beach houses, small apartments spread out around the island behind homes, or condos. There are obviously also shared spaces where you rent a room, but I always try to opt for something completely private.

Staying on the Beach

Our decision came down to wanting to be ON the beach, so we opted for a small condo on the seawall. When I say small, I mean small. Always look at the photos. The one we stayed in had 1 bed in a small bedroom, a bunk bed in the hallway only long enough for children, and a couch that pulled out into a bed. In theory, it “slept” 6 people. In practice, you’d be very very cramped if you had more than 2 adults and a kid in the place.

If you do go with a condo, be aware that you will probably have to pay an additional parking fee on top of your nightly rental. Most seem to be between $20-40 (and look like they’re good for a month). Some condos give you bracelets to wear so you can access pools and other amenities. Casa Del Mar did not have wrist bands. The bedroom windows though DID face the 24/7 lit up hallway so make sure the condo you book has blackout curtains/blinds if this is the case.

MEALS

Christmas in Galveston, or… well… anywhere, means you can’t rely on restaurants being open.

Get online and use your mapping software (google maps, waze, whatever) to see what grocery stores are in the area you’ll be staying in and check their holiday hours.

The condo we stayed in was close to a Walmart, Kroger, and a Randalls. We had never been to a Randalls, so we opted to do some light grocery shopping there. It was open on Christmas eve until somewhere around 6pm, which worked out well!
BONUS: There’s a Specs in the same parking lot if you need to pick up a bottle or 6pack. Since we always like to try new beer, we opted to go grab a local 6pack (none of the breweries were open for us to visit). Warning, the liquor stores have long lines on Christmas Eve. Everyone needs booze to deal with family, I guess hahahaha.

If you wander into Randalls, off to the right you’ll find a ton of baked goods, breakfast pastries that are hella cheap, plenty of ready to eat foods, and many cheese and deli meat things if you’re the build-your-own charcuterie board type. We are, and we did.

As for restaurants, every single place that was open Christmas and Eve had a completely full parking lot with very long wait times.

We DID dine out for dinner, though!

Moody Gardens does multiple Christmas eve/day dinners. Some are buffet style, some are sit down with a menu.
They aren’t cheap. We opted for the Festival of Lights Buffet (open christmas eve but not christmas day), for $25 or so per person. It was worth the cost. My personal favorite thing on the buffet was the cranberry-sage chicken… but they also had mushroom ravioli, ribeye, shrimp, ham, half a dozen salads, plus lots of sides. If you’re going to spend your holiday in the gardens, this is a great option.

Hilariously, our condo was right next to a Golden Corral. That was open Christmas day as well, and BUSY. (shhhh you don’t want that if you can have the fancy Festival of Lights one.)

On Christmas day itself, you’re on your own for the first part of the day. It seemed like most of the city really was shut down. The only thing we found open early while driving around was one bar. Later at night things started opening up again.

If you do happen to go out to eat while there, please understand that it IS a holiday and the folks serving you are missing the holiday with their family to do so. Treat them with respect, and tip really really well if you’re able to.

THINGS TO DO

The most popular thing to do on Christmas in Galveston is head to Moody Gardens.
Typically this stop includes a trip to the different Rainforest and Aquarium Pyramids. At the end of the year, however, they do something called Holidays at Moody Gardens.

You have the festival of lights, plenty of food type buffets, a 3d and 4d theater showing short holiday movies like Rudolph, a Cirque show, a fun giant slide to go down, and more. The festival of lights is PERFECT for kids with stops along the way for smores, pictures with santa, hot chocolate, etc.

We stopped into the buffet for dinner, then walked off way too much food by doing the festival of lights. (As a side note, if you visit in the summer they also do something called Christmas in July.)

Pleasure Pier is right on the water, and opened up about halfway through the day on Christmas. There IS an admission fee to get on the pier. You can either pay for a walk on, or for unlimited rides. There are rides, games, souvenir shops, and snacks. This is a popular place.

Every year they also do something called Dickens on the Strand if you’re there earlier in the month.

Galveston Island has a state park. If you’re in Texas often enough, make sure you get yourself a state parks pass to get into any park across the state for one price. Birding is a popular past time at this park.
The most simple thing to do on a holiday at the beach is… THE BEACH!

Christmas morning for me consisted of waking up, having a bagel, and then making some coffee and wandering around the beach with it. Once the coffee was gone, we hiked a few miles down the shoreline. Barefoot right on the sand at the water line is the best way to do it. You can get so much walking in without even realizing how far you’ve gone.
You’ll pass dogs playing fetch with frisbees, kids building sand castles, people napping on beach towels. It really is a relaxing fun place to spend a good chunk of your day.

You can take the ferry over to the Bolivar Peninsula if you want to explore more beach front.

CHRISTMAS IN GALVSTON PITSTOPS

You have to do a lot of exploring, wandering, and finding free stops early in the day on Christmas. We drove the entire seawall with the windows down, and explored a lot of the neighborhoods, looking at the colorful unique houses.

At the far east end of Seawall Blvd you’ll run into Fort San Jacinto Historic Point. Spend some time here watching the giant ships all lined up off the coast. You’ll get to see people fishing, too! Hang a right and drive (slow, since there is sand over the road) down to the very end to East Beach. You’ll find fewer people down here. It seemed to be more of a place for locals to get together on Christmas and have cookouts with family and friends. A great vibe!

Driving down Rosenberg street will dump you right into downtown near the harbor after seeing a lot of the historic homes. On any other day, this area is bustling with tourists and people. On Christmas? Empty! As long as you don’t mind everything being closed, it’s a great place to wander around and explore.

Need a beer?
Brews Brothers was open on Christmas!! A cute little dive-ish bar with a great craft beer list, and a fun bartender who said he always volunteers to work on Christmas. The locals there were welcoming and chatty. This is the perfect place to kill some time. There were even games and books lining shelves on one of the walls.

As for beer I would not recommend…
Beerfoot beach bar. Their website says that this is a brewery. They had no beers of their own. I won’t go into the service, but let’s just say we had to give our order multiple times while the bartender pretended we didn’t have the same conversation MULTIPLE times while trying to order. It was super strange. Which sucks because it was a great location close to the beach.

Need dessert?
There is a Ben and Jerry on the Seawall that was open.

If you get a condo, remember that many of them have heated pools and hot tubs! Spend your evening soaking, even if the winter air is chilly.

Galveston has some intense history, as well. If you get a chance, look up the storm of 1900. To this day, it is still the deadliest natural disaster and worst hurricane in US history. The city was destroyed and 20% of the population died. If you wander through museums or take a history tour, you can learn a lot about it.

We took it easy and spent much of our time gallivanting along the beach, but there were so many more things to try. There are places you can ride a pony, rent a bike or peddle car, play mini golf, explore a few mansions, and so much more!

While going out of town in the past on holiday weekends has typically been a bust, Christmas in Galveston was a good idea. It’s a touristy enough destination that even though not everything is open each and every day… there is still PLENTY to do.

Have you been there? Come chat with me about it on Instagram!

There are quite a few other places in Texas that are great to visit in the winter if you don’t want to do Christmas in Galveston.
If you’re on the other side of the state, my favorite time of year to visit Palo Duro Canyon is December/January as well! The hikes there in the summer can be brutal, but doing the Lighthouse hike in the winter when no one else is on the trail? Amazing!