I hope everyone is doing well and had a wonderful Christmas and New Years! Just thought I would hop on here and tell you a little bit about all the stuff we've been doing over the new year. Mom and Dad gave us the best Christmas present we could ask for by coming to visit for about 10 days. They arrived on the 23rd of December...and their luggage didn't arrive until the 30th. Oh that was just tons of fun let me tell you. But its ok..we still managed to have a great holiday and bring mom and dad around to a lot of great London spots like Camden market and the Hyde Park Christmas fair.
Some interesting things about English Christmas. For the most part it is quite similar to the Christmas I'm used to in America with a few noticeable differences. So if someone were to ask me where Santa lives, my instant response would be the North Pole of course. In England thats not the case. Santa lives in a place called Lapland which is in Finland. Yes you read that correctly. LAPLAND in FINLAND. Sooooooooo.......Santa speaks Finnish apparently, and likes fish, and uses a Nokia. Second difference is what is given to Santa on christmas eve. When I was little, we always used to leave milk and cookies for Santa..and maybe a carrot for the reindeer. Here in London, the most popular thing to leave Santa is liquor and mince pie. I just love the fact that they leave him alcohol!! And for those of you who don't know, mince pies are little mini pies filled with mincemeat. When I first heard that I could not understand why in the world you would eat a pie filled with meat for desert. Yeah...mincemeat here is a sweet filling made with apples, dried raisins and spices. Much more appetizing in my book. Last thing I love about christmas in England is a traditional turkey christmas roast with christmas crackers. Crackers are shaped like giant tootsie rolls and they have little gifts inside like paper crowns, playing cards, really bad jokes, mini tool kits etc. You always open them before dinner and then wear your paper crown for the rest of the meal/day.
So after having a lovely english christmas, we hung around in London going out to Camden for the afternoon..which mom and dad LOVED. Then the rents headed off to Paris for two days (lucky ducks). Finally when they arrived home from Paris they had their luggage just in time for us to head out to Dublin the next day.
My friend Becca is pretty much an amazing girlfriend because she surprised her boyfriend Joe with a trip to Dublin for his 30th birthday. Mom, dad, Joel and I all shipped out to Ireland to meet up with those two and 9 other people making it 14 Wiconsinites and 1 aussie :). We had a great time for new years going out to an Irish pub called the Porterhouse. Then throughout the trip we headed to the Guinness Factory, the temple bar district, the Jameson Factory, Christ Church Cathedral, the oldest pub in Dublin called Brazenhead which opened in 1198, and Irish music pub crawl, and more tourist shops than we knew what to do with (yes we came home with a Guinness ornament/oven mit and a grow your own shamrocks kit) :). Had a wonderful time and I've put together a video of some of the stuff we did: New Years Eve, The Guinness tour and Christ Church Cathedral. I also have a long video from the Irish Music Pub crawl but I'll put that up as the video for my next post. Enjoy!
