London, the place to be

3180Past weekend we were in London. Fortunately the flight to Heathrow didn’t go down the drain snow en we left Schiphol in time. The bus brought us near the cargo-platform where our fokker was parked, live and learn 🙂 We arrived almost half an hour early in London so including the time difference we already gained enough time! Click on read more to see what else we enjoyed this superb weekend!

3190After a short drive on the Heathrow Express we exited Paddington and our hotel was right next to it, good! A quick check-in and luggage drop on the room and we started walking towards (and down) Oxford Street. The christmaslighting was present and lit so that part of the trip was a success already! We stopped over at Starbucks for two steaming cups of chocolatemilk (‘a hazulnut & a caramel to go pretty please’). Afterwards we sat down in Garfunkel’s that was adjacent to the hotel (with inner access door) – which also allowed us to check out the place to have breakfast as that was also served by Garfunkel’s 🙂 Then we went up to our room where sleeping on a narrow (less than 1m40) double-bed proved a challenge!

3184In the morning our stomach was craving for some food (late breakfast opening and an hour of time difference) and I had a typical Tradtional English while Marianne settled for Continental – while some people wrote ‘too small’ breakfast on the various websites we had a fantastic meal and good service, it was more than enough 🙂 After breakfast we started out at Westfield, a big shoppingcenter where we spend some time and enjoyed the christmas surroundings. They even provided skating in the shoppingcenter and we visited our first ‘real’ Applestore 🙂 After this experience we couldn’t let Harrod’s go obviously and as transferring isn’t our most favorite time consumer we walked up from the musea’s in Kensington so we could see some more of London too. Harrods was surprisingly improved and looked very different, nice and pretty and with the added touch of christmas!

At night we went through Winter Wonderland in Hyde park, although christmas surrounding wasn’t our way to tuype it. To us it looked like a dutch fair (‘kermis’) 🙂 Only this one had a German influence and some were dressed up in christmas style! Funny though how a jungle-ride suddenly looks like an enormous Santa sled when you add lights and christmas tree leaves 😛 Next to the rides was a typical christmas fair which all kinds of offerings and German bratwurst, despite being cousy and congested with people it did mis that Weinachtsmarkt feeling as it is England after all. Afterwards we again sat down at Garfunkel’s for dinner and had an early bed-time.

3187On sunday the shops are open around mid-day so we had some time to ourselves to walk around and enjoy the lights and not so crowded streets. We’ve walked up both Carnaby and Regent before checking out the rest of Oxford, obviously with a chocolate-Starbucks ending before the opening of most shops. The Disneystore is a true experience during opening up but not one to repeat ever again 🙂 We went on to see an even bigger Applestore and Hamleys, the last being a true amazement of toys and something to defenitely not due with kids (not just them, but even you will get greedy :P).

3193At night we visited the London Eye from which we experienced a beautifull sight on the city and surely with the christmas lights all around. Thanks, London!

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