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!