Did you know London shuts down at Christmas?

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December 23 - 28, 2006

We spent a lot of time debating where to spend our Christmas. We considered staying in Turkey but thought a traditional Christmas might be more accessible in a non-Muslim country. We also thought about going back to Slovenia and heading to Bled for a nice quiet snowy Christmas. In the end the promise of a big city Christmas with Chinese food and movies won out. Needless to say, we chose poorly.

We had no idea that London completely shuts down for Christmas. But not just for Christmas. Stores start to close between 4 and 6 pm on Christmas Eve and most things remain closed on December 26 (Boxing Day) as well. When we say things are closed we no public transportation, including the Tube, no movies and no restaurants are open. This isn’t the “everything is closed” kind of Christmas you experience in the US where you can always find Chinese food and a movie. And it certainly was different from our last Christmas in Washington, DC, which involved Chinese food, two movies, a Matisyahu concert, and an after-midnight meal at 7-11. So we were sorely disappointed and realized after the fact that we should have just spent an extra week in Turkey where we were having a ball.

Notwithstanding the fact that everything was closed, London is still a fun town and one that Amy had not been back to since studying abroad there in 1994. It was expensive in 1994 but the prices today amazed Amy. It was also a very ethnically diverse city back in 1994 - it’s when Amy first discovered Indian food - but today it is one of the most diverse places we have ever been. In our 5 days there (plus two later visits on this trip), we rarely had a British person wait on us in any capacity.

We stayed at Apex City of London Hotel thanks to a fairly reasonable deal because the hotel was in the business district and we were there at the holidays. The room was very nice with a comfortable bed, dvd player and bathtub - all of which would come in very handy as EVERYTHING (in case you missed our subtle point in the first paragraph) was closed while we were there. The downside to the hotel was crappy room service and ridiculously expensive internet and phone. We assume most guests there have the luxury of restaurants that are open and also probably expense phone and internet to their clients.

We arrived in London around 9:30 at night and went to a nearby pub for dinner because it was the only open place we could find. It was good though and we were able to enjoy sausage, mash and cider (Amy’s drink of choice when she lived here). We came back to the hotel anticipating free internet and found out it was $10/hour or $30/24 hours.

Sunday - Christmas Eve

We went to the same pub for breakfast and Roger was brave enough to try the traditional English breakfast / heart attack on a plate. After breakfast we walked toward Parliament and Big Ben. We walked through Covent Garden which had a pretty festive atmosphere with people playing instruments, snow globe pictures and mulled wine ($6 for a small cup!). We stumbled upon the best travel bookstore in the world (3 floors!) and bought a Morocco guidebook. Then we walked to Leicester Square and checked out all of the movie theatres to see what we might be able to enjoy if we were willing to sell organs.

After Leicester Square we went to Picadilly Circus and bought ourselves a reasonable treat at HMV - the Extras dvd for $8 - which appeared to be the best bargain in London. From there we made our way to Oxford Street and explored the food market at Selfridge’s. We ate at Fine Burger Co. for lunch and then stocked up for the holidays. Our haul included magazines & Krispy Kreme donuts at Selfridge’s, foundation from Boots (how Amy had missed Boots!) and food for our Christmas meals from the prepared section at Marks & Spencer. The prepared food section at Marks & Spencer is one of our favorite parts of London (and our understanding is that this is what Posh misses most about moving to LA). There are endless possibilities with rows of premade sandwiches, salads and entrees.

We took the tube back to the hotel and again had sticker shock ($6 for one ride!!!!) Another meal, another night at the nearby pub for food and cider (though we have to admit, it is nice to be in a place where you don’t feel compelled to eat local fare regardless of what you may want). We came back to our hotel, talked to our parents and watched the Denver Broncos game.

Monday - Christmas

Christmas came and went and we never left the hotel. In fact, we never even left our room. We enjoyed our donuts and coffee for breakfast, our prepared food from Marks & Spencer for lunch and then pizza from room service for dinner, which was disappointing. Amy’s anchovy pizza was bad (I know most people would find that to inherently be the case). We talked to our families and watched the entire Extras dvd. Yep, that was our Christmas.

Tuesday - Boxing Day

Before leaving our hotel in the morning we asked where the Lyric Theatre was in anticipation of seeing Cabaret that evening. The woman at the front desk showed us a metro stop in Zone 2 and we headed on our way.

We spent the day walking around and exploring. While browsing through Chinatown and Soho we actually stumbled upon the Lyric Theatre - far from where our hotel had told us it would be. We had lunch at Mother Mash which was delicious. At Mother Mash, you order the kind of mashed potatoes and gravy you want and then choose from a variety of pies and sausage. Roger went with a pie (having developed a strong fondness for them in Australia) and Amy went for sausage. After lunch, we spent a good while amount of time looking for toffee pudding which we cannot get enough of and finally found it in a pub in Chinatown where the entire clientele was Asian until we walked in. Chips, cider and toffee pudding makes for a great treat. That night we went to see Cabaret which was really good. Amy had seen it several times but this was the darkest, most sexualized performance of it Amy had ever seen. We had what we understand to be a typical English post-theatre meal at McDonald’s.

Wednesday

We spent the morning at the post office which was not a fun experience. The post office in London charges a big price increase if a package weighs over 2 kilos so we spent a lot of time reorganizing our package into two separate packages. When we went back to the counter for the second time we found out that one of the packages was still over 2 kilos so we spent some more time rearranging and actually took a few items out. On our third trip to the counter we found out that the weight didn’t matter anyway because the size of our second package was too big which no one had bothered to mention on our first or second trips to the counter. So after all of that time and effort we only ended up sending one small package and we had to take everything else back to our hotel and pack it in our bags.

We had lunch at Pizza Express which was one of Amy’s favorite restaurants in college, probably because it was one of the few places she could afford. It’s still one of the few places we could afford but it was pretty good. After lunch, we went to an internet café to research what we were doing in Morocco. We had recently learned that we would be arriving in Morocco on Eid el-Kbir when, according to many on the internet, everything would shut down. Sound familiar? So we considered going to Ireland for a week or two before heading to Morocco. But after doing some internet research we decided that between change fees and prices in London and Ireland we should just go to Morocco and take our chances. We figured worst case scenario we’d spend another week hanging out in a hotel room. Afterwards, we went to a comic book store because one of us was jonesing for some comics and then to a burger joint called Ed’s for dinner.

We came back to the hotel to check out and got a nice surprise. Even though we had a phone card with a toll free number for all of our calls to our families during Christmas, the hotel charged us $90 for those calls. We also had quite a bit of difficulty using the gift certificate that Amy’s parents had gotten us to use toward the room for Christmas - the woman at the front desk insisted that we needed to use the gift certificate when we booked the room even though Amy’s parents did not buy the gift certificate until after we had booked the room. These are just a few reasons that our review on tripadvisor is less than favorable.

With an early morning flight to Fes, Morocco, we checked out of our central London hotel, took the train to Luton, then a bus to the airport and then walked from the airport to a nearby hotel for just a few hours of sleep. We found out that internet was much cheaper here than at our last hotel ($10 for 2 hours) so we played with that and then went to bed.

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Photos

Harrods! World's Greatest Department Store!
Also, closed for the holidays. As Americans we have to wonder how such an advanced people celebrate the holidays without shopping.

"Saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain...
...he was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook, gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein....
A-OOOOOOOO Werewolves of London!"
- Mr. Warren Zevon, eating chow mein in spirit

Did You Know They Made Dirty Dancing Into a Musical?
We saw Cabaret over the holiday, but consider this photo foreshadowing....

London's Rocking Christmas Elf
We know we posted this photo before, but Roger loves this guy too much to not put him back up in a post.

Tower Bridge, London (not falling down)
Everything closes at Christmas, but at least you can still use the bridge to cross the Thames.

Comments

[Joy]

We're still bummed that we missed seeing you in Dublin after Christmas last year, but understand. One of these days, they've got to start a cheap non-stop flight between Boise and Phoenix!