Christmas vacation comes at the perfect time every year. With the craziness of the holidays, I’m always ready to put everything else away and spend time with my family. This season we teamed up with the Downtown Center Business Improvement District to share a few family friendly local spots. When you think of downtown LA, of course everyone thinks of the food, the shopping, culture, events, and all around unique experiences, but some are not super kid friendly. So we spent a day discovering a few gems that were perfect for our family, especially during the holidays, and we’re excited to share them!

Our first adventure of the day was to FIDM — the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. I’d been to the campus before and toured some of their design rooms and classes, but this time we went to the campus museum and shop. Their current exhibition is called Reves de Fleurs, or Dreams of Flowers, and they had the most amazing floral dresses from the 1700’s, from Christian Dior, and from local designers. I was in heaven, although the boys preferred checking out the gift shop where they have tons of cool gifts, products, jewelry, books, home decor and more from local and world artisans. I’m also SUPER excited about their annual exhibition coming in February that features costumes from the last year’s movies…they said they might even have some Star Wars costumes!

After the museum, we made a stop at Grand Hope park, which is a beautiful and super clean park for children right on the FIDM campus. The boys could spend the rest of their lives at parks, and this one had fun equipment that could have entertained them for hours. Of course it was even more fun because Philip was there…and dads make everything more fun.

Once we were done at the park, we headed to Pershing Square where they have an outdoor (holiday) ice skating rink. I took ice skating lessons for years when I was growing up, and only ever once skated on an outdoor rink, but I’ve always wanted to do it again! This rink is right in the heart of Downtown LA with sky scrapers surrounding it, and with Christmas music blasting it was so magical. If only it had been a little colder so I could have worn my coat, then it would have been absolutely perfect 😉

Our final stop of the afternoon was at FIG-at-7th, which is an open-air shopping mall located in
the Financial District of Downtown LA. It has three levels of shopping with great stores like Zara, H&M and MAC, but it also has a big eating hall called TASTE Food Hall, and is filled with all sorts of local chef-driven eateries that are perfect for foodies like us. We chose Mendocino Farms, which was so cute, and the food was amazing (make sure you get their fresh seasonal lemonade…I’m still thinking about it). We sat outside while they played live music, the boys danced around, and we just soaked up the fun atmosphere. It’s a great spot for families, but also perfect for girls night or date night!

Finding things to do in your own city is so much fun. Visit DowntownLA.com for everything that’s happening in DTLA!