It's a new year so I thought I would try to resurrect my blog! I hope that you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve. We celebrated in London this year! It was fantastic!!
Last year our little travel group celebrated in Zurich and after the fireworks there we went back to our hotel room and watched on the t.v as other countries rang in the new year. When London came up the show they put on was awesome so we decided then and there that the next year we would be in London to see it ourselves! Soo....
365 days and an hour on RyanAir later and we arrived in London. We spent a total of about 4 days in London, which we absolutely loved! London is one of our most favorite cities to visit, because they have such great food, shopping, and entertainment. We never run out of things to do when we are there.
On New Year's Even we started our night pretty early at Marco Pierre White - Wheeler's of St. James for dinner. We made our dinner reservation for 6pm because we wanted to have a nice meal before we had to stand in the cold to wait for the fireworks. Since all the instructions we were reading online stated the viewing areas for the fireworks start to close up at about 9pm we wanted to be sure to give ourselves plenty of time to make it there.
Dinner was AMAZING!!! You never know what to expect when a restaurant has a set menu, and so far our tract record has not been good, but Wheeler's did not disappoint! I had the Lobster cocktail to start then the Lamb and Mussels with Potatoes as my main. Phillip had Salmon as his appetizer then the Steak and Potato puree for his main course! Then we both finished our meal with the most incredible Chocolate Tarte!! Delicious!!!
The only strange thing about dinner was that we were mainly in the restaurant by ourselves!!! We thought it was extremely odd (and scary) when we first showed up! We thought for sure the food was going to be terrible. When we asked the waiter if they were expecting more people he said of course, but not until 9pm and that most people would be staying in the restaurant to celebrate the new year. Not us though, we came to London to see fireworks!
After dinner we walked to the Thames to try to secure our spot for the show and just as we arrived the first viewing area closed. We were told to start walking towards Trafalgar Square and there would be more entrances along the way. Well, as we kept going, the viewing areas kept closing! We were seriously starting to believe we would not get in. Finally we reached the last viewing area and luckily they were still admitting people. This was only about 9:30pm! We worked our way in and after some jostling we settled on a spot to stay in. While we were quite a ways down the river (at least a mile from where we first started), we could still see the London Eye, so all was ok.
We had to wait around for almost 3 hours for the fireworks show, but London did not disappoint!!! The show was incredible!! It also helped that they are trying to show off for the Olympics this coming August, so they really put a lot of money into the display!! No doubt it was one of the best New Year's Eve's we have had!
Coming up on the first fireworks viewing area by Big Ben.
Finally made it in and found a spot!
Rhiannon and I.
Our group. We didn't make any plans yet for next New Year's since we likely won't be able to be together, but rest assured our New Year's tradition will continue in the future!
Happy 2012!
While I don't like making resolutions, I am going to make more of an effort to blog this year! Talk to you again soon!!
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