Sarah's Time in London

As I said earlier, my little sister Sarah spent her entire 3-week Christmas break with us. We spent a majority of that (14 days) travelling to Paris, Spain, and Holland, but she did have 11 full days in London. Since Jenna and I unfortunately had to work a few days in the month, she did a lot of the main sightseeing by herself, like the churches and parliament and some museums. This post covers off the majority of the things we did together during that time, though.

The Nutcracker

We were pretty happy to get a few free days in Paris as a result of bad weather, but the one thing that worried us about not getting back was losing out on our tickets to The Nutcracker. We had tickets for the evening of the 23rd, and were very worried that the Eurostar delays would cause us to miss it (which is one of the reasons I showed up at the train station at 4am).

Fortunately, everything worked out and we spent Christmas Eve Eve at the ballet. It wasn't quite as bad as I thought, although I did start to doze a time or two in the middle. It was a modern interpretation, which we didn't know before we showed up, and it made it more interesting, I think. Imagine if Dr Suess were to design the sets and costumes, and that is what we got - it was very interesting. Also, the ability of the dancers was pretty impressive! It was just the thing to put us in the Christmas mood!

Christmas

I think I've noted before that the city basically shuts down for Christmas. On the day, the trains are not running at all, so anywhere you go requires walking, and anywhere you walk to is most likely going to be closed as well. So, we decided that the best option was just to stay home and have some family time.

Since we were leaving for Spain the day after Christmas, we didn't want to make a big Christmas dinner that day and leave a bunch of left-overs for a week. So, we decided to have our dinner on the 24th, which turned out great. We cooked a turkey that turned out really well, and then had all the classic extras that it is possible to get the ingredients for - cheesy potatoes, corn pudding, strawberry jello/cream cheese/pretzel delight, etc. After lunch we set off to make dessert - Christmas cookies. We made my Great Grandma's amazing orange slice cookies (somehow Sarah cut her finger as she started on her one cookie-making chore), and also our favorite sugar cookie recipe. We then spent the afternoon eating one while icing the other. It was great. All of this was then intermixed with watching some of our favorite Christmas movies (Elf, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, Love Actually, etc).

Christmas Day was also a joyous day of nothing. We did have to do a little packing for our Spain trip, but we mostly just hung out eating left-overs and watching movies. We had a small gift exchange in the morning, and tried to do some blogging in the afternoon (which obviously didn't work out too well), but otherwise we just spent the day relaxing and spending time together. It really was a wonderful way to spend the day, and probably second-best to being able to spend it with the rest of our family back home.

Tourist Day #1

On the weekend after New Year's we spent Saturday out and about in London. Our first and primary stop was the London Eye, something Sarah wanted to do and something we've been putting off for months. It is a giant ferris wheel with huge 25-person pods rather than rickety seats, and it offers great views over London. We've never gone because we needed that perfect combination of clear skies on a weekend when we were actually in town, and that is a tough combo! Luckily, it was unusually beautiful this day, so it was perfect for taking our "flight" as they call it. It was a 30 minute total journey, and the views were really great.

After the Eye we headed over to one of our favorite places in London - Borough Market. It is unfortunately going through some renovations and is at about 1/2 size, so Saturdays that used to be pretty cramped are now bordering on miserable. We forced Sarah to go anyway, and ended up getting some good lunch there.

Our final stop of the day was the British Library. Sarah had this on her list, and while we'd heard of it at one point it wasn't really something we had on the radar. We were really glad she pointed this out, because it was pretty awesome. It is an actual public library with hoards of books, many of which the public don't actually have access to. The thing to see is the museum section, though. They have all of these manuscripts and first editions by famous British authors like Austen and Dickens and a bunch we've never heard of. They also had several books and documents of historical importance, like a Guttenburg Bible and one of the 3 remaining original copies of the Magna Carta. We didn't spend a ton of time here, but it was very rewarding none the less.

Varekai!!!

A few days before Sarah was set to come over, we saw the posters start popping up in the Tube stations. Advertisements for Varekai - the new show by Cirque du Soleil coming to London. After our trip to see Cirque last year, it took us about 30 seconds to decide we wanted to go, and as soon as we got Sarah on board, we booked our tickets.

The ballet dancers at The Nutcracker were pretty impressive, but when compared to this it was like comparing tee-ball to the major leagues. I'm sure some ballet enthusiasts would disagree, but I would respond to them by calling them a dork.

The acrobatics show that Cirque puts on is out of this world. If you haven't seen it before, it is a must to add to your to-do list. If you live in a city where they don't visit, I would even say it alone is worth a trip out to Vegas. The stuff they do is mind-boggling. To be honest we noticed a lot of similarities between this and the last show. Seems like they have some standard acts (Asian children throwing things in the air, juggling, crazy flipping, etc) that they then throw into a somewhat odd story line. Even with a bit of redundancy, it was amazing. You forget just how outrageous some of the stuff they do is. I guess it is hard to put into words how good Cirque du Soleil is, but just suffice it to say that we will definitely be attending any time they come to Dallas.

Tourist Day #2

Sarah's last Friday in town (just before we left for Amsterdam), Jenna and I both took the day off work and spent it touring around the city. I actually had to go into the office for about an hour in the morning, but then met up with Jenna and Sarah in Covent Garden around 10:00. We did a little bit of shopping there before going over to Portobello Road market.

We moseyed up the market and looked at a few things, but didn't linger too much as we were on a mission for lunch at Jenna's favorite spot in London - Books for Cooks. If you don't remember, this is a little bookstore that sells only cookbooks. They also then have a "test kitchen" in the back where they cook various recipes from the books in their shop and sell them dirt cheap to people like you and me. A 3-course meal costs less than $10, which in London is similar to the price of McDonalds, but here you pay that and the food actually tastes good! The food was, as always, amazing.

After eating we split up - Sarah and I off to the Tower of London and Jenna off to the mall in search of some warm, comfortable, hideous boots. I really enjoyed being back at the Tower. It sits just across the Thames from my office, and I spend my workdays staring at it. It is by far my favorite site in London just based on all of the history there and the fact that it is a huge 900 year old castle in the middle of the city. Sarah enjoyed it as well, though probably not as much. We took the tour with the Yeoman Warder (Beefeater) which was very good, and also checked out the crown jewels (which I think she liked the best). I was all about heading up into the main part of the Tower museum, but Sarah didn't care too much, so I gave in and let her leave early.

After snapping a few pictures outside we met back up with Jenna and headed a few blocks over to the Tate Modern museum, another return for us. Again, we didn't spend a ton of time here since it was late and Sarah doesn't really like modern art, but it was nice to walk through here once again. The Tower and the Tate may both be on our list of places to see just one more time before we leave...

That was pretty much it. I think Sarah had a good time with us over here. At least is wasn't bad enough for her to tell us she hated us or anything (although I think I saw it in her eyes while standing in the rain in Sevilla). We are so glad that she was able to make the trip over here to see so many amazing things, and that we could travel some with her!