My first Merry Christmas outside of Canada!

**Photo heavy! And the photos should be a little better quality from now on because I've been forced to link them from Flickr, and it's finally working for me!**


The next day (December 24), I decided to go visit St Paul’s Cathedral since I knew it was one of the few things that would be open. I peeked in and decided that it was too expensive to go in, so I just walked across the street to a little burger shop for lunch.

My first glimpse of the cathedral.

Next I decided to check out Covent Garden. The area around the market was really neat. There were lots of street performers, neat stalls and interesting shops. I bought some Christmas gifts for my hosts there, including a CD of chamber music from a group that was wandering around there performing. I also bought myself a Christmas present of some adorable gorilla earrings and a panda necklace from one of the stalls.

They would get up close and personal any time someone was coming to give them money.

Covent Garden Market.

After that I just kept walking and walking. I saw Trafalgar Square, and Drury Lane, and managed to make my way all the way back to the British Museum. When I couldn’t find anything open to look in, I just decided to go home. I stopped at the pound shop and Primark on my walk home from the tube station, and bought myself a couple things including a red sweater to wear for Christmas.

Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar square.

I had gotten home fairly early because I thought we were supposed to be going somewhere for carolling, but we ended up just spending our time getting everything ready for dinner. I helped by folding the napkins specially.

D’s friends showed up and after we visited with them for a bit, we all headed off down the street to the church for Midnight Mass. It was a really neat little church that had vicars listed from the 1300’s. The mass was pretty good, but the little boys who were performing the music were a little bit off. They put in a great effort though.

Outside the church.

Inside the church.

We came home and had tortière (meat pie) for our reveillons (French Canadian tradition of eating Christmas dinner after midnight mass), and then opened a couple gifts. I got a journal and a Paddington bear print of him in Paddington station. I thought it quite fitting after the time I had spent there.

D’s friends left and then everyone went to bed. Some stockings were filled, and I wrapped up the gifts I had bought and put them under the tree. By that time it was really late.

On Christmas morning, we all woke up a bit late and had just enough time to open our stockings before we left. I got a lovely stocking filled with a lot of British themed things (lots of Union Jacks). We all piled into the car and drove out into the countryside to visit some friends and have another Christmas meal with them.

Me with my stocking.

We had our big meal at lunch time, and it was absolutely delicious. It was pretty fun because the dad of the family and his parents were all Canadian, so I got to spend my Christmas with a bunch of Canadians! The two little girls were lots of fun but they were sick so they were coughing everywhere. I even got some nail polish as a gift from them.

We're ready to eat!

Our turkey! Yum!

Our Christmas lunch was so massive that it took ages to get through. There was just plate after plate of yummy food, so once we were finished we just relaxed for the rest of the day. We watched some movies like The Polar Express, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I played with the girls and we had some fun with air hockey, pillow fights and Uno. After the girls went to bed, the adults played Trivial Pursuit, but it was a rather unorthodox game after they decided that the questions were too hard, so they just kept giving each other clues to the answers.

I had gone to bed relatively early and had heard that the girls likes to wake up guests pretty early, so I wasn't surprised when one of them showed up in my room the next morning (December 26). I got up and had some breakfast and then got my things ready to go.

Another family came to visit with their kids, so I hung out with the 4 little ones watching TV. Just before we left, we took some group photos of the family, and then we got into our car that was decorated like a reindeer (we all had reindeer antlers as well).

We decided to stop at a neat old pub for our lunch. I had pheasant pudding, hot chocolate and sticky toffee pudding and it was all delicious. I slept for a good part of the ride home, and then we just relaxed for a while, watching The Child and the Fox. It was a really good movie, made by the same people as March of the Penguins. After that, we finally opened our Christmas presents.

The Christmas tree with our Christmas haul.

I got a surprising number of gifts! My hosts were exceptionally generous, so I had a fantastic haul of Christmas presents. We all had to take turns opening our gifts and after that we just had a simple dinner. I stayed up late to pack my things and do my laundry, and I made sure to check in for my flight to Rome. I also got a bit snap happy with Gigi because she came to sit on my bed.

Gigi!

LOL. The bright flash is no fun!

Next - leaving London to go on a Contiki tour!

Christmas shopping, Sightseeing and Concerts

The next morning (December 22) I got up pretty late (since I had gone to bed late). D and I spent a fair bit of time trying to get a hold of Air Canada and the Canadian High Commission, but we couldn’t get a hold of anyone. Not even when we tried the French lines or the ones to complain about the clubbing of baby seals. We had been trying to get a hold of someone because we had been seeing reports about people stuck outside of Heathrow and we were wondering if there was anything we could do to help.

Just before I headed out for the day, I went to pick up some groceries for the corner store so that we could start making our Christmas dinner.  Then I got on the tube and headed to Harrods because I wanted to see it. I went in for all of about 3 minutes before I decided that I couldn’t stand it (there was a bit of a Christmas shopping rush), so I left right away. I looked around a few other stores and then went towards Piccadilly Circus.

Looking towards Harrods.

I found a Cinnabon there (it was nice to have a cinnamon bun that reminded me of home), and a little Panda shop where I bought a cute little button for my backpack. Then I just started walking. I got all the way to Oxford Street, and walked up and down it, popping into lots of different shops and hoping I could find myself a Christmas present because I thought the only present I would be getting would be whatever I bought for myself. I didn’t find anything I wanted though.

The panda shop!

My backpack buttons!

As I was walking around, I ended up talking to one of my English friends on the phone, and he apologized on behalf of his country for me not being able to get home. After that I decided that I really needed to find some food, so I kept walking and eventually grabbed a sandwich at a grocery store. I also happened upon the Canadian High Commission, so I made sure to hop up on the step so that I could say that I went to Canada over Christmas (because the building is technically Canadian soil). I took the tube home and I was lucky enough to get a ride from the station to the house from G. By that time it was fairly late, and the rest of the night I just took it easy.

The Canadian High Commission (it was hard to take a photo in the dark!).

The next morning (December 23), I decided I needed to do something touristy, so I got up and headed towards the Tower of London. I had a hard time deciding whether or not I wanted to go in because it was pretty expensive, but in the end I decided that I needed to go in since I was already there, and I had to do something touristy while I was in London. First I got some fish and chips though, then I got my ticket and went in.

Entrance to the Tower.

I really enjoyed it. I saw displays of what the Tower would have been like in medieval times and I thought it was really neat to see the rooms where the prisoners had carved graffiti into the walls (some of which was very elaborate). I also saw the crown jewels, and read the story about the biggest diamond in the world.

View of the bridge from the Tower.

Some of the graffiti carved into one of the walls.

I was sure that the huge black crows (ravens?) were going to eat the tiny little bird in the bottom right corner.

Some of the armour on display.

After the Tower of London (and the view of the Tower Bridge), I got back on the tube and headed off to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. It was just starting to get dark as I got there, but I got a pretty great view of the parliament buildings, the London Eye, Big Ben and Westminster. The Abbey was really expensive (and I think it may have been closed at that point anyway), so I only went into their gift shop.

The London Eye.

Parliament.

Big Ben.

Back of Westminster.

I had to hurry home since there wasn’t much time before we were supposed to leave to go to the concert we had tickets to, but I made sure to quickly buy myself a Christmas stocking on the way home. I got changed quickly, and D, her parents and I headed off to Barbican Hall.

We had to drive to the tube station, and the traffic was horrendous! D had to let us out and then turn around to get out of the traffic while we waited for the train. When we finally got onto the train, it went just past the first station, and then it came to a full stop and just sat there for ages because of “delays”. It was infuriating, and we were sure we would be late for the concert.

Luckily, we got to Barbican Hall on time, and we had good seats. The concert was splendid. The orchestra was lovely, and the choir sang beautifully. All of the songs they did were Christmas songs, and for some of the carols, the audience was able to join in as well. It was really fun to sing the Christmas carols, and the sound of all the hundreds of people singing the songs was quite powerful. The children’s choir sang beautifully, but I thought they deserved a little more solo time, and the tenor had a brilliant voice. It was a great concert.

The concert hall had fantastic acoustics and felt very open and spacious.

In the lobby.

Next - an unexpected very Merry Christmas!

Beginning to explore London

I slept until around noon the next day (a good 12 hours or so). It was already December 20, but I still didn’t know what I was going to do. Luckily, the family offered to let me stay for Christmas, so I figured that if I couldn’t get a flight home, that option would be highly superior to sitting in my dorm room alone.

I decided to go explore the neighbourhood a bit, and headed up the high street for some shopping. There were a lot of pound shops, and I had some fun looking in the Primark. I walked a long ways, all the way back up to the tube station, looking in the shops along the way, and then headed home.

On my walk-about.

That night was just relaxing, and when I went on the Internet, I found out that two people I knew from the program I did during my gap year were also in London, and planning to meet up the next day at the British Museum, so I decided to come along as well! I also heard from my parents that the only option they had found that could possibly get me home in time for Christmas would be to train to Belgium (which would have been hard because the trains were pretty much at a standstill), fly to South Africa, then to Brazil, then to Canada, and it would cost $4500.

Tuesday (December 21), I got up fairly early because I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to take the tube to meet my friends (especially since everything was still running slowly because of the weather). Luckily, one of the cats had come in nice and early to make sure I was awake to give her some pets, so I was well awake by the time I needed to be.

I got on the tube and had no trouble getting to the Museum, so I was quite early. It gave me some time to look around the neighbourhood, and I found a few camera shops that I had some fun looking in. Then I went into the museum and stuck pretty close by the Rosetta Stone where we were supposed to meet.

British Museum.

Rosetta Stone.

I found the girl right on time, but she said the guy was running late. We looked around for a while trying to see if we could find any Banksy graffiti (apparently there had been some there at one point, but it was removed), and then we decided that we were both really hungry so we would just go to the Thai restaurant and wait there.

We ordered our food and it ended up showing up before he did. I really enjoyed my meal, and it was gone by the time he showed up (1.5 hours late). We chatted while he ate, and it was really nice to see people from Katimavik.

We went back to the museum to look around and saw some neat things (a lot of mummies). We also saw a little display about the massive amounts of inflation in Zimbabwe & how it was cheaper to print posters on money than on paper just because of how worthless the paper was.

There were bills worth $20,000,000,000 in this poster. That's how bad the inflation was. There were even notes worth trillions of dollars in the display.

I needed to get home because of some activities I had been invited to participate in that evening, so we took some photos together, and then I said good-bye to my friends and headed home. The tube had more massive delays, so I was worried I might be late, but I made it on time.

Taking photos in the museum.

When D got home, she drove myself and her old neighbour (a girl a little younger than me) to Canary Wharf to meet up with the girl’s sister before we all went ice skating. D bought me a skating ticket, and then we all went for some Starbucks hot chocolate before skating.

The skating was really fun, but it did take me a while to get used to being on skates again. I was a little unsteady at first, but I got comfortable fairly quickly, and I didn’t feel that bad because not many other people there knew how to skate. There were lots of penguins (like chairs) out for people to support themselves with. I was pretty tense, so my feet and legs got tired pretty quickly, but I never ended up falling!

When we had finished skating, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I had some delicious hibiscus water, taquitos, and sweet potatoes, plus some ice cream with hibiscus sauce for dessert. It was all really good.

Heading home we stopped at the DLR station to pick up one of the girls’ bags (because that’s where she works). Then we dropped the girls off at their house. I got to tell D all about Katimavik on the ride back to her house and found out that her parents had billeted a number of participants over the years.

Next - more exploring London.

Enough time at Heathrow to last me for life

**Continued from the last post of my time in Heathrow on December 19.**

After seeing the Republic of Canuckistan, I tried to sleep on the floor for a bit, but by 4:30, people were already lining up for the desks to open at 6, so I got into the line. I got a text from my brother that said Heathrow was supposed to be closed until Monday, but I remained hopeful. I started chatting with some of the women waiting with me in the line, and found out that some of them had been even worse off than me, having been stuck in Heathrow since the day before.

The chaos of the queue. Heathrow was ridiculous that day. It was like a refugee camp or something.

6:00 came and went pretty quickly, without anyone showing up at the counters, so we decided that there wasn’t much of a queue because no one was going to come and help us. Then we just sat there and waited for any kind of update as to what would be happening.

One by one, airlines were cancelling all their flights for the day. Air Canada just kept saying to wait until 9:30 “for more information”. Finally at 9:30, they cancelled everything and told us that we needed to phone their reservations office to find a new flight. I had to borrow someone’s phone to call my parents and tell them what was happening.

Everyone started trying to rebook their flights. One of the women I was with managed to get through after 30 minutes of being on hold and reschedule her flight and one other girl’s. Just as she was trying to help me out in rebooking my flight, her phone died. I tried to go find a pay phone to call for myself, but they all had huge lines. Luckily, I managed to get a hold of my parents with a text message (my phone was running very low on credit), and asked them to try calling for me.

I wandered around by myself, not sure if I would be staying in London, or if I would have to go back to Lancaster on the train, and I tried to nap. At that point they weren’t even letting people into the terminal anymore, so there were just crowds of people stuck outside with no idea what was going on. When any of them finally managed to get in, they had to find out from other passengers that all the flights had been cancelled (there were still a couple airlines that flew out a flight or two, but that was it for the whole day).

I ended up running into some people that I had been queued up with, so I stuck with them while I waited for news about rebooking my flight. My parents finally phoned me back and told me that they had just spent the past 3 hours on hold with Air Canada. When they finally got a hold of someone, they were told that the next available flight would be for December 26, and that was the day I was supposed to be flying from Canada to Italy, so it was no good. Then my parents decided to try and find me somewhere to stay in London. We couldn’t think of many people other than relatives of relatives, but we thought it would be good to try just in case they were able to add some extra flights so I could get on one.

I fell asleep under a tin foil blanket, and when I woke up, my parents told me that they had found someone for me to stay with. It was my cousin’s fiancée’s cousin. Good enough for me. I got in contact with her, and directions from her and her husband to get to their house via public transit, and headed off.

They picked me up from the tube station, and we went to their house. I got to meet her parents (aka my cousin’s fiancee’s aunt and uncle), and then we had some dinner. After dinner we decorated the tree, and it turned out beautifully with its red & gold “Mystical Forest” theme. 

Our masterpiece coming together.

Putting the star on.

The little pinecone decorations were my favourite.

They had told my parents that I would have to sleep on the couch, but then they were able to find a bed for me, so I just went to sleep (without much of a plan of what I was going to do).

Next - exploring London instead of Canada.