Christmas in London

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As mentioned in a previous entry, I spent Christmas in London with one of my closest friends Gabrielle (oh, and the injured Choco).
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We had planned how we wanted to spend our day - eating, drinking, and eating LOTS more. We figured if we couldn't have our families around us, we would surround ourselves with delicious food instead. In the end, we didn't even eat half of what we bought. But we had a lovely relaxing day and a fabulous Christmas dinner.

So excited (as a girl) to get a chance to carve the turkey (portion)!
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The result. Gourmet!
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My apologies

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I know it has been a while. I am now about to make a mammoth attempt (while my dinner cooks for twenty minutes) to get myself back into the blogging mentality. Probably by now no one even checks my blog but(!) just in case, I will try to back track and update with the major events of the past two months. You will see a number of entries go up with nothing in them - this is to motivate me to post, and to excite you about what is to come!

Enjoy.
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To my dedicated followers....

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Walking on water...

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On the weekend my dutchie friend took me out to Zaans Schans which is about 20mins out of Amsterdam. It was the first weekend in over ten years that you could walk and skate on the rivers and lakes in Holland. Sooooooo much fun!!!
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There were lots of windmills in the area. On the video you can see people walking & skating on the ice. These little rivers weaved through the fields / wetlands that you can see in the background.

Christmas is over

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Christmas trees are being abandoned on the frozen canals

(which are now starting to melt)
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(I only ever get the chance to take night time photos of my neighbourhood!) .

and ice rinks are being disbanded...

(Brugges)

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It's always sad when Christmas is over but at least no one has gotten around to taking down all of the lights (cities always look so much prettier with twinkling Christmas lights). Oh... and easter eggs are now for sale so it's not all doom & gloom!!
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Snowsnowsnow

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This morning I woke up to a white Amsterdam! It was only a thin coating but all of the canals have frozen over and are now also white with snow eeee!!

Here are some photos I managed to take on my way to work this morning (before my camera died) of the canal outside our apartment:

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Looking left....
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and looking right....
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We then proceeded to walk to work with snow falling down upon us. And although it kind of became more rain than snow pretty quickly it was still special!

Oh, and the cobblestones were even more treacherous in the snow. Even with the Hannahs grips on the bottoms of my shoes I was still slip sliding all over the street! Thankfully I remained upright at all times (horrah!).

Y Amsterdam
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For Nan & Nanda....

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This afternoon I was reunited with my beloved Gabrielle. To celebrate we headed to St Paul's Cathedral in London to attend the Carols Service.
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Although we had to join an incredibly long line (which almost went right the way around the cathedral) we made it inside and got seats with a view of a very nice / plain pillar. However, the choir and all the priests etc. did a procession at the beginning so we got a close up look. The little choir boys were so cute with their lizard frill collars on!

Apparantly the choir's singing was far preferable to ours so we only got to join in on a couple of songs (Lauren & Naomi will be sighing in relief) but we didn't know half of them anyway : )

Unfortunately I can't say that I managed to get through the whole affair without a few moments of shut-eye... though I did try to fight it... and it was church after all!

But the cathedral? Amazing. So amazing. I would show you but the man told me off for trying to take a photo (after the service of course!). Oops.

Proof of my attendance:

Merry Christmas Nan & Nanda!!!! I made it to church!
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