English Christmas - Our 30 day Holidays recap :D

Hey guys,

I hope that everyone is having a very merry Holiday season filled with quality time with friends and family and tasty goodies...and good luck to everyone attempting to go Boxing Day/Week shopping today :P

I have to say it's good to be back home this time of the year to spend time with our TO friends and fam. As an additional bonus, we get to spend all week having Xmas dinners...and eating leftovers the rest of the day, which is my favourite delicious activity of the year :)

In case anyone is curious about what Christmas season is like in England, I put together this little storyboard of our Holiday inspired activities throughout December :D Happy viewing and Happy Christmas (as they would say in London)!

Regent Street Lights Switch On

London becomes an extra festive place around the Holiday season: shop windows decorated with Christmas motives, entire department store walls glowing with lights, decorated trees on every corner, and streets covered with all sorts of Christmas inspired light designs.

Regent Street is one of the main shopping streets in London, and the annual street Christmas lights switch on is traditionally a big deal. They usually recruit someone famous to do the honours, preceded by a mini concert. Anna and I experienced our very first Regen Street light switch on this year, that featured performances by last year's X Factor winner (i.e. the British Kelly Clarkson...except for he was a boy) and the cast of Jersey Boys. Here's what it looked like:

The Countdown, the switch on, the lights, and naughty Santa

Christmas Markets in Bruges with Anna

Christmas markets pop up all over Europe starting in late November, and lasting into December. There are literally hundreds of them sprinkled all over Europe, with some of the best ones being in Germany, where I was told they originated. Set up like little wooden stalls, they sell anything from Christmas decorations, to socks and candles, and feature delicious local snacks. In London it's steak burgers, spicy sausages and mini pancakes with Nutella, in Paris it's gluwhein (spicy hot wine), crepes and pastries, in Florence, strangely, it was a German market, so we had German sausages with saurkraut and strudels...

The one in Bruges, which is a town in Belgium on the outskirts of Brussels, was classically Belgian, featuring Belgian waffles, more sausages, french fries with mayo and hot chocolate made with Belgian chocolate. Bruges is known as the European capital of chocolates and lace. It's a quaint town with picture perfect houses lined up along canals and painted bright red and yellow. I would say that at least 50% of the town commerce is chocolate, so we had a fair of that. I first had it when Mark brought it for me when he was in Bruges 2 years ago, and I was blown away. Still the best chocolate in the world in my opinion :)

What's cool is that we took the coach bus to Bruges. The whole journey took us just under 5 hours, which included driving through England, crossing the tunnel into France (it's cool because the coach bus goes into the train, which then tows it through the channel), driving through France, and arriving into Belgium. It's crazy to think that you can drive through 3 countries in 5 hours, when you can barely drive to another province in 5 hours in Canada.

View from the canals

Lunching on Belgian waffles (me), and sausages (Anna)

 

Houses off the main square

Christmas with Roomies

A Christmas is not complete without a Christmas tree, so we got one for our flat...and then went out to Hawksmore for one of the best steaks in town (and the best sticky toffee pudding) to celebrate. Meet our Xmas tree! :)

Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park and Skating at Somerset House

As I mentioned before, London gets very festive around the Holidays. Winter Wonderland is a giant fair that is set up in the Hyde Park. Of course, we couldn't miss the chance to check it out and fill our bellies with yummy snacks, before we went skating. We went skating at the Somerset house, that hosts the prettiest skating ring in London. Sponsored by Tiffany's, it glows a gorgeous Tiffany's blue and features a giant sparkly Christmas tree. There's also a DJ spinning fun skating tunes, so you see all sorts of people busting moves in the middle of the ring.

Shocking (because I am Russian), but I'm actually a pretty bad skater lol, so there were no moves from me. The boys that we went with were pretty impressive, however!

Hanging with Santa

Anna and I got this awesome idea to take pictures with every Santa we saw. It started in Bruges, and over 2 days we took pictures with about 10 Santas :D

 

The Crew: Steve, Anna, Rachel, Jessie, Andy, Chi, Bela, Vi and Van (and me and Mark)

Skating ring at Somerset

Energizing ourselves with hot chocolate before skating

Mark and I on skates :)

Skating train!

Holiday Inspired Games Night and Sunday Roast

It's somewhat a tradition for Mark and I to host a Christmas dinner for our friends during the Holiday season. This year we held our very first London Christmas get together with all our amazing London friends. Being in the UK, we modified our tradition slightly from a dinner to a Sunday roast, which is a 2 pm Sunday meat eating affair. Mark got to make his master piece to date - a 40-days-aged-fall-off-the-bone 20 pound roast for 14 people. Compliments to the chef, as it's the best roast I've ever had! Some of us, who shall remain unnamed, even fell into a food coma after eating it :D

Guest of Honour!

Tasty apps photographed by Anna

All the pretty ladies!

...4 hours of roasting later...this thing was 20 pounds and bent our oven tray

The feast

The dessert feast courtesy of Bela and Anna

The food coma :)

Leaning towers, art elite and chianti - a Tuscany adventure

My first encounter with anything Tuscan related can probably be dated to 2 Christmases ago when I watched Under the Tuscan Sun at Mark's house. I remember seeing ancient houses, vineyards and pizzas, all of which were still there in real life, just a lot more impressive (and delicious in the case of pizza) than what you see on TV.

I will skip the part where we almost missed our flight on account of a certain unreliable airport shuttle company, and fast forward to the first stop in our Pisa - Florence - San Gimignano - Sienna - Chianti itinerary.

PISA

I don't remember who first told me about the Leaning Tower of Pisa...probably my mom...but I remember wanting to see it since I was a kid. I don't know what's up with my childhood Italian fascination, but this was also the case for Vesuvius and Pompeii :D

Pisa itself is a lovely ancient town on the western coast of Italy. The coolest fact about Pisa (in my eyes anyways) is that Galileo used to conduct his gravitational experiments by dropping all sorts of stuff from the Leaning Tower. I thought about reenacting that, but they had nets around the tower :( The town is split into 2 parts, separated by the river Arno - the old and the new Pisa. It is in the old part that you can find the main attractions - the Leaning Tower, the Duomo (church), and the Baptistry. Our hotel was in the new part of the town, but it was kind of a bit of a castle. At least 200 hundred years old, winding staircases, stone walls...definitely fitting in with the town look and feel.

We spent our day exploring the city and staging a photoshoot around the leaning tower... :D Here are a few highlights!

A school in the centre of the town...nicest school I've ever seen!

The Duomo

Whoa, the tower is falling!

Don't worry, I'll fix it...hehe

City view from the tower. I love the orange houses!

Elena and I on top of the tower

Town view

The tower at sunset. No photoshop people, it really did glow gold like this!

FLORENCE

Florence was our Tuscan stop number 2 - an easy 80 minute ride from Pisa. We arrived at lunchtime on Saturday to find ourselves in the midst of the weekend market activity. We ventured out to find a pizza place (which we did find, and it was delicious!), getting lost in the winding streets littered with stalls selling leather, knits and Christmas goodies. I ended up buying a scarf which I now love :)

I want to call Florence the quintessential Italian city - large enough to have things to see and do, yet small enough to keep its charm, long winding streets uphill and downhill, century old houses, squares and court yards dominated by churches, and a sea of pizzerias and gellaterias. I didn't know this before coming there, but it turns out that Florence was the birthplace of renaissance, and is considered an art and science capital of Europe, as pretty much every single renaissance artist and scientist was from Florence.

Unfortunately, the museums decided to go on strike right when we arrived there, so we couldn't see any of the Michelangelo works, or the real statue of David...we did see the whole of Florence from the outside though hehe. My only other complaint is the lack of nightlife, or at least the nightlife that we wanted in the form of clubs and lounges. We did find one club though, but were promptly turned away from it on account of being too old for their high school kid night. A very sad night indeed hehe.

The City Xmas tree in the main square

The Duomo - view from the top

City view - again, love the orangeness of it all! It actually look like the city is littered with castles. I kept thinking of Rapunzel all the time hehe

Views of Arno

The city park was closed, but we got to walk along the park wall...

The David statue replica outside the palace museum. We never got to see the real deal because the museum was closed. And yes, there's a lot of nakedness in Florence...

My friends, Galileo and Newton

CHIANTI

Ah, the home of Mark's favourite wine...which as I learned, is classified by having a composition of at least 75% San Gimignano grapes...or at least 85% if it's a Reserve. If I write it down here, I won't forget it like I did with all the other wine facts I ever learned :)

We did a lovely day tour of the Chianti region (a Tuscany sub-region). Chianti is most known for its beautiful landscapes, vineyards (which go hand in hand), and medieval towns. We started our day in the old medieval city, but presently a village, of San Gimignano, where we climbed a thousand year old watch tower and learned that the village has way too many torture museums for its population of 7000. Sienna, with its beautiful downward sloping cobble stone main square where we had sipping chocolate was our stop number two. We closed the day by visiting a vineyard where we had a yummy tasting of the local wines and produce, such as cheese, olive oil and sausages. We were hosted by some great hosts - Marco, a local award winning winemaker and his lovely wife Adriana, and left buzzed on generous portions of wine and grappa. :)

Spectacular Tuscan landscape. I could only imagine how beautiful it is in the summer!

Fortress walls in San Gimignano

Torture museum #1...out of like 5...people must've really liked torturing each other back then

View from the top of the watch tower (we actually had to climb a ladder part of the way to get to the top!)

Sienna's main square

...and main church. Every Italian city has a main church hehe

I ordered hot chocolate, or cioccolata calda, and got a cup of sipping chocolate. Obviously, I didn't complain!

This was the cutest thing I've ever seen. The horsey and the sheep live in the vineyard that we went to visit, and when our minibus pulled up, the little sheep got scared and ran up to his horse friend for protection. They stayed there cuddling until we left them alone. Precious!