Stephen and Sarah's blog: Christmas and New Years

This was our first Christmas in London, and while the lead-up had threatened it we just missed out on our first ever white Christmas. It was great being in London in the lead-up, and the highlight was Handel's Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall.

We weren't the only ones spending Christmas without our families, and were joined by Matt Williams for Christmas Eve and Christmas lunch, and then by Kylie and Anthony for Christmas dinner. A few things that stood out for us at Christmas this year:

Public transport in the UK simply does not operate on Christmas day; we hired a street-car to do a shuttle run to drop Matt off and pick up Kylie and Anthony - and the roads were totally empty...
It's impossible to buy a ham over here that doesn't need baking - but honey glazed baked ham is fantastic and I think we'll do that every year now...
We were glad to have friends around but missed family a lot - thanks to Skype we could video-conference with them which makes the whole world seem a lot smaller...

For New Years, we'd arranged to go to Hogmanay (a street party in Edinburgh) with Rick, Matt and Jo, but Sarah was shaking off the last of the flu and with temperatures ranging from -7 to +2 we didn't think it was such a good idea for her to go. I went alone, and it was a really fun few days (quite reminiscent of the college days, including a Terminator movie marathon and a visit from our former exchange student Nikki). Sarah wasn't abandoned, catching up with Kylie and Anthony for NYE in London.

Pre-Hogmanay drinks in our apartment

We armed ourselves with light-sabers, but the crowd was fantastically well behaved and a really fun atmosphere

Fireworks over Edinburgh Castle were amazing

A rather sinisterly-named pub...

We went on a New-Year's day walk up Arthur's Seat - and boy was it icy (not shown - Rick, Matt and Nikki sliding down the slope on their bellies like penguins)