We visited Green Bay and it was just the best experience! Not only was it within driving ditance, but it was so family-friendly! Below is our 3 day itinerary. I hope you and your family enjoy exploring here as much as we did!
Table of Contents
Day 1 Itinerary
Checked into Hotel Northland
We stayed in downtown Green Bay at Hotel Northland. It has been a cornerstone since 1924. This historic hotel has two restaurants on site, a fitness center and an attached parking garage. We had connecting rooms for our hotel stay, which was great! My husband and I had a King-sized bed with a side room where we put our baby’s pack n’ play. Our older three daughters stayed in the connecting room with two Queen beds. Everything was comfortable, clean and we felt we had plenty of room for our family of six.
Tour of Lambeau Field
This was actually my first time visiting Lambeau Field (even though I grew up in Milwaukee and am a huge Packers fan). I was thrilled, along with our whole family! My daughter said it looked way cooler in person compared to on TV. The Green Bay Packers is the only team that does not have an owner. It is owned by the people! In 1923, the Packer’s were in debt $5K. So, they sold one thousand shares for $5 a share. The people saved the team! There are currently 500,000 stock holders. We did the Classic tour of Lambeau Field, which was 55 minutes long. We started up in the suites, and then walked through the Packers tunnel to the field.
In 1957 and 1960 sold out for season tickets and has been sold out every year since. There are currently 158,000 on the list for season tickets and they can be willed down! Some other fun facts that we learned on our tour…the Packer locker room is 7000 square feet! In addition to the locker room, there is a full pool, 70 yard field, nine classrooms, basketball court, restaurant, barbershop and more! There are currently 81,041 seats in the Packers stadium. This was such a great tour with lots of history and I really like the length with little ones. After the tour, we walked through the Packers Hall of Fame. This was a combo ticket with our tour. We enjoyed seeing the history of the team as well as learning more about the players. Go Pack go!
Dinner at The Turn
For dinner, we ate at The Turn, which was right next to Lambeau Field and Titletown. This had great food and was such a fun atmosphere! The beer battered onion rings and the cheese curds were our favorite appetizers. It was very kid friendly and they had Topgolf suites too.
Ice Skating at Titletown
I can’t even put into words how awesome Titletown is. This downtown area was perfection. It had an ice-skating trail, a tubing hill, cafés, bonfires. many heating areas and an awesome light show on Lambeau Field every 30 minutes. It is free entry. so you just pay to skate or tube! The tubing hill was closed because it was too warm while we were there, so we’ll just have to come back another time! My girls’ favorite was the light show which was every 30 minutes on the half hour. We saw it three times while we were skating and our girls loved it every time! It was on the outer wall of Lambeau Field and included some fireworks shooting off. They also had really neat lights around the rink and skating trail. I loved how everything we did this evening was so close to each other and it definitely was so family friendly.
Day 2 Itinerary
Breakfast at Cafe Con Crema
We ate breakfast at Cafe Con Crema and it was so good.
The Nutella crêpe and the fresh fruit smoothies were a huge hit!
NEW Zoo
We visited NEW Zoo in Green Bay. The Northeastern Wisconsin Zoo is AZA certified just like our St. Louis Zoo. They have around 200 animals and we had a great time exploring here. They offer behind-the-scenes tours and encounters with giraffes, otters, snow leopards, penguins and tortoises. Our favorite experiences were feeding the otters meatballs and petting the tortoises. This also was the closest I’ve ever been to a moose! Murphy, the moose, had quite some personality and it was so fun to see him walking in the water.
One thing that stood out to us after leaving the zoo is that all of the staff knew every single of the animals’ names and their personalities. We were pretty blown away. You could tell the staff cared about these animals and were passionate about sharing information about them.
Meyer Theatre
We also had a tour of the historic Meyer Theatre in downtown Green Bay! It opened in 1930 and became a three-screen movie theate. Just 25 years ago, a community group wanted to bring this back as a historic theater. They succeeded! It opened in 2022 and has 1000 seats. It was so beautiful. I’d love to return here to see a show someday!
Lunch at Hagemeister Park
For lunch, we ate at Hagemeister Park. It is right along City Deck, which is a quarter mile of riverfront boardwalk along Fox River. The restaurant was decorated indoors with many Christmas lights around the booths, as well as igloos on the patio.
National Railroad Museum
We headed next to the National Railroad Museum with routes starting back to 1956. The National Railroad Museum has grown to become one of the largest, oldest, and most well respected rail museums in the United States! They have over 70 pieces of rolling stock, 100,000+ artifacts, seasonal train rides, indoor and outdoor exhibits, operating/display tracks and special events! Currently, they have 62 Christmas trees set up for their Festival of Trees, where different businesses around Green Bay decorate a tree! Our family‘s favorite was a tree showing dairy products with many cows on it. The museum was so cool with lots of history…and then you had in all the Christmas trees. We highly recommend this stop!
NEW Zoo Canopy Trail
Our last stop was back at NEW Zoo, but this time we were back at the adventure park. Right next to the zoo, there is an adventure park with trails that you can cross country ski, snowshoe, and bike. They have gear for rent if needed. They also have an awesome canopy trail that goes from the adventure park all the way to the zoo and you can even walk over some animals’ exhibits! During Christmas, they decorate this canopy trail with lots of lights! The tour is a half mile along. We walked one way from the adventure park to the zoo and then we walked along a sidewalk back to the adventure park.
Day 3 Itinerary
Breakfast at Grapevine Cafe
For breakfast, we ate at the Grapevine Café before starting our adventures. We initially planned to eat at Toast, but we discovered they were closed for the holidays when we pulled up. We saw this was close by and decided to check it out. The food and staff were both great! We were happy that we ended up here for breakfast.
Fonferek’s Glen Waterfall
We explored Fonferek’s Glen waterfall. It is free entry and it was really flowing with all the rain the past couple of days. There is a short few minute walk from the parking lot to an observation area overlooking the waterfall. This is a 30 foot waterfall on a 75 acre conservation area. It was beautiful!
Baird Creek
Next step was Baird Creek, which is a great paved trail in Green Bay. The Baird Creek Preservation Foundation has preserved over 600 acres here. This was my kids’ happy place. We got muddy, played with sticks, found all the rocks and took in the beautiful river. It was such a peaceful spot.
Lunch at White Dog Cafe
After hiking, we ate at White Dog Cafe. There was fun artwork on animals from local artists. Plus, we voted this place for the best cheese curds we had tried during this trip. We have been trying cheese curds at every restaurant and this spot won by far.
Sabamba Alpaca Ranch
After lunch, we explored Sabamba Alpaca Ranch, which was incredible. This husband and wife team have 47 wonderful alpacas they offer great tours and we’re so knowledgeable. We met the alpacas and learned about the shearing process that happens once a year. We twisted the fiber to create long and strong yarn strand. It was crazy how strong the piece was after spinning it! We fed the alpacas next. Our girls got a chance to take the alpacas on a walk around the farm. What an awesome experience! We learned that alpacas do not feel comfortable with hands reaching out to them, but they do like giving Eskimo kisses! Sabamba has a great gift shop too. I purchased some hiking socks, which I’m excited to try out. Alpaca fiber has natural moisture wicking properties and is a superb insulator.
Green Bay Botanical Gardens’ Garden of Lights
We enjoyed the Garden of Lights display to end the night! The first section of the trail is walkable. Then you have a choice to continue walking the trail or take a horse-drawn wagon while taking in the lights. We chose the horse wagon! It was a cool way to see the rest of the lights! There were over 40 light displays in 350,000 lights.
Green Bay Botanical Garden spans 47 acres and have more than 85,000 breathtaking plants and flowers.
Overall, we just loved our visit to Green Bay!! Highly recommend visiting this wonderful Wisconsin city. Head to Discover Green Bay to explore more about this area!
