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Published: December 16th 2007
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Leicester Square
There were people dressed in Santa suits everywhere! What a busy week it has been! Despite the chaos at work of having to mark exam papers and submit student grades by Friday, our week turned out wonderfully. Today is our one year anniversary! We celebrated our anniversary yesterday by spending the day in London. When we arrived in London we ventured to Leicester Square, which is a pedstrianised square in the west end of London. The square is lined with shops, cafes, restaurants and theatres. Something weird must have been happening on the weekend because there were at least a couple hundred people dressed up in santa suits! We had some lunch and then went to a box office and bought tickets to go and see the evening production of the musical Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. The Apollo Victoria Theatre is located in the City of Wesminster in London near Westminster Abbey, parliament, and Buckingham Palace. So, we left Leicester Square to go find the theatre so we wouldn't be late for the show later! After we found the Apollo theatre, we decided to walk back to Buckingham Palace. We visited the Palace early in September, but we only had the opportunity to see it at night.
Since it was the middle of the afternoon, the Palace was swarmed with tourists! After the Palace, we continued our adventure to track down Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Westminster Abbey is absolutely stunning! Bri's brother sang in the Abbey years ago when he traveled to London with the Stratford Boys' Choir, so that small fact made the visit have a bit of sentimental value. 😊 We took lots of pictures of the Abbey as well as parliament and Big Ben. Lastly, we wandered into a McDonald's to use the loo...and we were totally in awe of the place! We thought the McD's near our house was nice inside, but this McD's was super nice! At this particular McDonald's the uniform was similar to that of a flight attendant and the decor was Asian influenced (check out the pictures).
After our sightseeing we went to a wonderfully romantic restaurant near the Apollo theatre called Bella Italia. The ambiance was romantic and we dined by candlelight. We shared a very nice bottle of red wine, followed by bruschetta, and then our delicious main courses. Will had roasted chicken and Bri had spinach and ricotta stuffed cannelloni. The food was fantastic! We
ended our meal with dessert and tea. Our last adventure of the night was to go and watch Wicked. We have two words to describe the production: ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL! The set, cast, music and performances were incredible. It was the perfect way to end a great day.
Today we are celebrating Christmas at our house since next weekend we are all leaving for the holidays. We exchanged gifts this morning and we cooked another big meal. This morning we made bacon and egg rolls for breakfast and drank champagne and orange juice over a game of Euchre. Our menu for our big meal included turkey, roasted potatoes, roasted parsnips and squash, potato salad, steamed beans and carrots, mulled wine (red wine, brandy, orange juice, pieces of apple and sugar all heated on the stove) and cheesecake for dessert. YUM!
Here in another thing we've noticed that's different here from back home: We got frost this week! Gasp! And not only did we get frost, but the city workers salted the sidewalks like crazy! Heaven forbid there be frost on the ground! It was rather amusing seeing how people go into a state of "emergency" when there's a threat of "bad"
weather. We can only imagine what it would be like if they ever experienced a REAL Canadian winter! So, we are anticipating school closures if we get only a few centimetres of snow some day this winter. Let's cross our fingers for a day off!
That's all for this week. We'll likely be bringing a laptop with us on our vacation so we can do some research of the places while we're traveling, so we may also post some pictures of our trip while we're there! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone! Best wishes. Love, Briana & Will.
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Carlo
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snow
its a REAL canadian winter right now...almost 40cm overnight...hope u guys have a merry christmas!!