Happy New Year Everyone!!

I hope that everyone had an amazing New Years Eve full of excitement and fun! BUT...before I get to my London New Years events I have some other stuff to share!

On the 27th one of my dearest friends from University, Carrie, flew into Gatwick! Me and Marlee were both VERY excited to welcome her to London, even if it was only 7 in the morning. We left our house at 6 and finally rolled into the airport at 8...what a feat! Carrie was sitting there ever so patiently waiting for us. We got home that day and basically lived the dream while Carrie slept for 20 hours straight..jet leg much? Once Carrie FINALLY woke up, we have done some shopping and some sight seeing.

THEN, if ONE visitor is not exciting on the 30th, my curling buddy Jerid flew into Heathrow at 9 in the evening. To Heathrow it only takes around 30 minutes to get from our house to the tube and to the airport. lovely. Jerid wasn't hit by the jet leg like Carrie, but instead sleeps weird hours of the day even now.

The 31st..aka New Years Eve was a blast here in London! Me, Marlee, Jerid and Carrie headed over to Kristin's for some drinks and good cheer before heading to see the fireworks. We got there and decided it would be best to start out walking around. Apparently the thing to do here is to in fact just wander around on the streets drinking. It is so weird to walk past a cop holding a beer and NOT getting into any trouble at all! Blows my mind! Anyways, we walked through the crowds to Trafalgar Square. Once at Trafalgar Square we did our best to meet as many people from every country on the planet. I also did my very best at wishing people a Happy New Year--from Canada! Finally, the clock aka Big Ben struck twelve and the crowd erupted and fireworks went off! It was seriously surreal, at one point I think I had tears in my eyes! Hearing Big Ben and seeing the fireworks as well as watching the crowd it was pretty amazing! We had some fun after and finally rolled into home around 4:30 in the morning.

Being the go getter's that we are we got up and hit up the famous London New Years parade in central London. The parade was so fun! There were tons of people everywhere watching, thank goodness I'm so tall and tower over people that I could see everything! HA! Eventually, people got cold and left and I finally got a prime seat up front to watch the excitement. There was funky bikes, hot rods, clowns and of course marching bands. I don't think that London has any marching bands because there were 90234089348 bands from the states in the parade. The bands were definitely my favourite part of the parade. After three hours of parade and the fact that we couldn't feel any part of our body, we decided it was time to come home!

The next day, (Jan.2) we went on a walking tour by Sandeman's London Tours. The website sums up the tour best: "Walk in the footsteps of the rich and powerful on our Royal London Tour. We’ll introduce you to the personalities who ruled Great Britain, from Edward the Confessor to Winston Churchill. We’ll also take you to the buildings where they lived, worked and played, as well as where many are entombed today. This tour winds its way through the city of Westminster, home of the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey." Overall, our tour guide was amazing and had some funny stories about each location such as a story of a drunken Irish man who managed to break into Buckingham palace and to the queen's bedroom without getting caught. The tour guide was very animated and really loved his job which made it most interesting. Overall we saw, Hyde Park Corner
• Buckingham Palace
• Churchill’s War Cabinet Bunker
• The Houses of Parliament
• St. Martin-in-the-Fields
• Westminster Abbey
• Trafalgar Square


• Nelson’s Column
• Wellington Arch
• St. James’s Park
• 10 Downing St.
• Horseguards
• Whitehall
• Big Ben

Thing's I've Learned....

1) New Years is CRAZY here. There I said it.

2)On the tour I learned...One of the Mayor of London's election promises was to rid of the pigeons all over the city. To do so, he gave people little bags of bread to feed the pigeons BUT the bread wasn't just your regular everyday wonder bread..no..not for London..they put contraceptives in it! YES, the pigeons in the city ARE on birth control!

Stay tuned for a blog about Stonehenge and Bath.....