Our Winter Christmas

James and I spent the Christmas period cruising, trying to keep warm and working. Here are a few photos from our Christmas time.

A week before Christmas

A week before Christmas we went up to London for the day. We spent time exploring all the Christmas decorations and smelling the sweet smells of Christmas markets all around the city.

Trafalgar Square in the morning light. The tree on the right has been given annually since 1947 by the City of Oslo as a token of gratitude to the people of London for their assistance during 1940-1947.

 

 

Winter Wonderland

Of course, we couldn’t go to London at Christmas time and not go to Winter Wonderland.

Winter Wonderland is a busy, crazy, Christmas carnival market in Hyde Park. There is a lot of German/European Christmas Market influence, with wooden huts, Biergartens, and rides with German names. It’s a pretty exciting and Christmasy place. When we were there, it was busy, but not crazy busy.

I loved the smells of the market. I could smell mulled wine and cider, cinnamon, caramel treats, and chocolate. The smells were the closest we got to most of these treats because everything is very steeply priced and we thought we’d just buy some food elsewhere to save some dosh.

Later on in the day, we wandered back through Regent Street area to see the beautiful lights at night. Then we headed towards the London Eye to walk back along South Bank to the train station.

Incredible sights of the London Eye lit up for Christmas. We found another smaller Christmas market at the bottom of the Eye. This one was a lot more low-key than WW but still festive as.

 

A lovely lit white and silver lit tree near, yet another Christmas Market, Christmas by the River. This one was probably my favourite because it had all the stalls and bits and bobs of the other markets but just smaller, spread out nicely and nowhere near as busy. Festive and relaxing 🙂

Still smiling at the end of the day, cold but full of Christmas spirit!

Christmas Weekend

This Christmas was an interesting one for us. Away from both our families and celebrating in the middle of Winter…. madness!

We had a lovely Christmas, just the two of us. We skyped both our families on Christmas Eve which was really nice, then had a lovely Christmas dinner on the festive day.

Although it snowed two weeks before Christmas, we didn’t get the white Christmas we dreamed of. More like a grey Christmas, but cosy and festive nonetheless. Being from New Zealand it was strange to have Christmas in the winter. Long warm evenings, playing backyard cricket and ice cold ciders were swapped for cuddling up watching movies, dark nights and mulled wine.

Christmas dinner for two. I don’t think there has ever been a quicker Christmas clean up!

A belated Merry Christmas from James and I. Hope you have an amazing New Year, let 2018 be great!