So it's only 6 weeks until Christmas! Can't believe it's so close already. There are lot's of exciting things to do in London at Christmas, and I'm really looking forward to having a White Christmas...but also not, because that means it's going to be horrendously cold.
It's already getting really cold, it has been around 5 degrees all week. That means it's already colder than an Auckland winter and it's only Autumn, I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with a full blown English winter.
At least I get to wear my gumboots, that's an upside. I wish I could wear them everywhere, I'm pretty sure native Londoners laugh at me when I wear them, but they're so comfortable. If only I could find another pair of boots that kept my feet warm and dry, but were not so obviously gumboots!
We have planned a trip to Brussels and Bruges at the end of November, so we're really excited about that. We've seen heaps of photos of Bruges, and it looks really pretty. Lots of chocolate shops everywhere. We're catching the Eurostar on the 26th November, a Friday night and staying in Brussels, then leaving for Bruges on Saturday afternoon. So we'll have 2 nights in Bruges. It will be our first trip to Europe, so that should be really fun. The Christmas markets will be on, which is why we're going at the time, so there will be heaps of yummy food on offer.
We're deciding whether to go away over Christmas. We've got 4 days off, but can't decide where to go. We would have liked to get the train somewhere, but it's super expensive for Christmas Eve so we might look at flying. At the moment we're thinking Prague might be really nice at Christmas, but we might change our minds if we stumble across a package deal for somewhere else.
Over Christmas, ice-rinks pop up all over London. The best ones seem to be the ones at the Tower of London and the Natural History Museum. The Tower of London creates a rink around the moat of the castle, apparently it's amazing and has inspired heaps of marriage proposals, so we need to book tickets for that. Very excited at the thought of drinking hot chocolate and going ice-skating. Not that I can actually ice-skate, the last time I went was when I was about 14 at Paradise in Avondale! So we might have to take some video to put on the blog...
They also do a big one at The London Eye, we haven't actually been up there yet, so we may have to make an evening of it. Would be awesome to be able to see London at night and look down at all the skaters underrneath.
They have a big tree lighting ceremony in Trafalgar Square on the 2nd of December. Every year England is gifted a tree from Denmark as a sign of peace, so they have a big ceremony on the first Thursday in December. Then they have carol singing in the square leading up to Christmas.
There is also a lot of Christmas events at The Royal Albert Hall. Christmas Carols and choirs and things like that. I love listening to Christmas carols, so I might need to convince Bradley to come with me for those.
There is a Winter Wonderland opening in Hyde Park next weekend. There will be a big ferris wheel, a circus and an ice rink. There's also a German Christmas market opening from then until Christmas. So you can buy gingerbread and mulled wine. Am very excited for all these Christmas events, not to mention the late night shopping and Starbucks Toffee Nut Lattes :)
We've been struggling slightly with finding really warm winter clothes. What we really want is merino under layers but we can't find any! I knew I should have stocked up in New Zealand, some possum fur gloves and a scarf would be great right now. Everything here seems to be acrylic, that's not going to keep me warm in -1 degree weather. Will have to put it on my Christmas list maybe...
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