10 Tips & Tricks for Glensheen Christmas Tour 2018

New to this year, we have created a companion app for your general admission tour of Glensheen. All smart phone devices can download the app.

The app includes a lot of information on each room, but if you want, it also includes an audio tour for each room of the mansion. So make sure to bring your own headphones.

If you forget… we do sell some in the gift shop for real cheap and we will loan adaptors if necessary.

We purposefully setup a number of Instagram-able spots or photo moments around the estate and mansion. So… take a photo and post to your social media with the hashtag #glensheen. That way we may see it later. We typically give prizes weekly to people who are taking photos during the week. Hint — We like fun photos with people in them.

Photo Moment — Sleigh

Photo Moment — Chair in Library

As a big change to any past experience on the grounds, we have added a large variety of outdoor light displays with the intention that they are a little tacky. Our hope was to make Glensheen a little more welcoming and less intimidating to our larger audience.

In recent years, kids are becoming a larger and larger part of our audience. This is another attempt for younger audiences to enjoy Glensheen as much as their parents.

Tacky Christmas is only available till 9pm on Friday and Saturday nights.

Though… on weeknights the grounds close at 6pm… and it gets dark at 5ish. Any tour admission gets you access to the display.

The Great Glensheen Outdoor Tacky Christmas Display

Throughout the general admission tour, we have decorated 25 Christmas trees throughout the mansion, make sure not to miss any.

Library looking towards Living Room

This is our most popular photograph location during the Christmas season, so go ahead and take a family photo in front of the tree. We won’t mind if this becomes your Christmas card.

Do you have kids? Well one of the best ways to keep them busy on the tour is to purchase one of our Elf Books, which is like an I-Spy book for items and hidden elves throughout the mansion. It also is a great way to help teach your kids more about the history of the home.

Elf Book

This tree is filled with the Congdon family’s original ornaments. How will you know they are original? Because each of the original ornaments have museum identification tags or accession tags. These tags have numbers which correspond back to our museum database of objects on the property.

Original Congdon ornament from Library Christmas Tree

Now that we have snow, the grounds of Glensheen really add to the Christmas feeling. We advise to make sure you walk on our photo friendly stone arch bridge, see the boathouse, take a photo of the front of the mansion from West Gate entrance near London Road, and walk up to the tennis court then turnaround and see the beautiful view of the Carriage House, Gardener’s Cottage and, of course, Lake Superior.

Stone Arch Bridge over Tischer Creek

While you are in the kitchen, make sure not to miss our Shortbread cookie, which is reproduced from a recipe made by Clara Congdon herself. Also they are baked today by Johnson’s Bakery which is a local bakery here in Duluth. Next to the cookies are copies of the recipe card if you want to bake them yourself at home.

Clara Congdon’s Christmas cookie recreated for you on tour.

The easiest way to skip the lines and get the tour and time you want is by pre-purchasing your tickets on our website.

What’s our website? — www.glensheen.org

Image of our website

At the start of the tour in the Carriage House there is a photo booth with a touchscreen which will guide you through the process. After you are done, you can send the image via email, text or share it to Instagram. It actually creates a little GIF, so be prepared for the three photos it will take in immediate progression. Below are some of our tour guides having fun with it.