New Years

So here are some of the wanderings that I went on this New Years in London:

From London New Years

Throughout the night the Eye was lit up really bright. There were spotlights all over it and the color kept changing. It was pretty cool to see. I took this pretty early in the night when I was coming back home for dinner. They ended up blocking off the bridge were I took this from later in the night.

From London New Years

People waiting around in Trafalgar Square before midnight. There had three or four big screens up, but they really didn't play anything. They had instructions on how to get home on the Tube for later.

From London New Years

The Strand was pretty busy last night.

From London New Years

As was Picadilly Circus.

From London New Years

There were a lot of people walking past the Chandos once things were finished.

Holidays in London

So last week was Christmas here and it was celebrated with much fanfare.

Things started on Christmas Eve since we got of work at 7 instead of midnight like we normally do. That was really nice to have a bit more time in the Evening to relax and enjoy ourselves. We setup the top bar for the festivities the next day and sat around and talked for awhile. We kept it pretty low key for the next couple of hours enjoying our free time. Later that night most of the staff went out to a bar for Christmas Eve. That was a bit odd to tell the truth. I can't say that I've ever gone to a bar on Christmas Eve or ever will again for that matter. It was a fun night though.

Christmas day was a lot of fun. Things kicked off around noon or so when we headed to Trafalgar Square to start a little game of cricket. We lined up in front of the National Gallery facing Nelson's Column and started bowling. It was an absolute blast. We got more than a few funny looks from people and we had even more people taking pictures of us playing. Only four of us actually turned up, it seems there were quite a few casualties from the night before. We kept that up for a couple hours and than called it off. Bowling is surprisingly tough on the shoulder.

From Christmas at the Chandos

We had a little bit of time to kill and get prettied up for dinner. Middle of the afternoon we congregated in the top bar and started into the snacks. A lot of it was pretty standard: mince pies, crackers, candies, and such. There were a few odd bits though. There were these things called Twiggies, I think. Weird baked all grain sticks with some sort of seasoning that I couldn't identify. They were...odd. We played cards for a couple of hours while dinner was getting finished up and I learned a couple of new card games.

Dinner itself was absolutely amazing. We had roast lamb, roast vegetables, roast potatoes, potato bake, haggis, gravy for the main course. It was so good. For starters I had a brie and cranberry filled filo pastry. Desert was a meringue filled with ice cream and than covered with fresh fruit and cream. I was pretty floored to tell the truth. They really went all out for us. We spent a couple of hours eating and joking around before moving to open our secret Santa gifts, or as the Aussie called them KK gifts. I never really got a clear explanation as to what that meant.

That was my Christmas from across the pond. I don't work New Years so I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I know that they have something planned here but I don't know what I'll do for the day. I guess I'll just have to leave that for another post.