Dec 28th, 2008
Christmas eve in London
Many couples and family will choose to go on their holiday during the end of the year during thď˝…Christmas and New Year season. This year, we will spend 2 weeks in Europe with the first stop being London in United Kingdom.
We arrived on Christmas eve, Dec 24 early morning (we left on Cathay Pacific flight 1am on Dec 24 from Hong Kong). However, we made a mistake and thought that we will arrive on Dec 25… therefore our hotel for London was only booked starting from Dec 25. We are well known for last minute arrangements and yes, the London hotel reservation was also done via online london hotel website just a night before we left London…. Luckily upon arrival, we directly went to our booked hotel near Paddington Station, and they managed to allow us to extend our stay and offered us a good rate for this walk in hotel booking.
From the Heathrow airport in London, you can easily take a train to Paddington Station (a choice of either Gatwick Express about 16 pounds per person or Gatwick Connect about 6.90 pounds per person). We tried with the the Gatwick Connect and upon arrival at the Paddington Station, we just walked over to our hotel called the Shaftesbury Paddington Hotel, located along Westbourne Street. The way was only 10 minutes and very convenient. The rooms in this hotel is brand new but very small compared to what we had expected. The good thing about staying here is that the internet connection is Free…
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| From Santa going online for Christmas |
Looks like Santa Claus is also using the Internet!
After having a simple breakfast of bagels at a cafe around our hotel (plenty of choices just in front of Paddington Station), we headed back to the hotel for a good sleep as we were not sleeping in the 12 hour flight from Hong Kong to London. After our nap, we took the Tube ( underground ) from the Paddington tube station to Oxford Circus station. This costs 4 pounds each and it was only a few stations away.
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| From Fione spends Christmas Eve in London |
Upon arrival at Oxford Street, we walked around and the streets were filled with last minute Christmas bargain hunters. We also could not resist and ended up buying “some” items of course (check out the slide photos to see what we purchased).
As it was Christmas eve, most stores will close by about 5pm.
Christmas eve was a romantic candle light dinner with 3 course dinner consisting of :-
Appertisers / Starter : * sushi platter, grilled octopus,
- Harrace ordered extra oysters too
Main courses of : * barbecue ribs and barbecued prawns with potatoes (really small round ones the size of baby tomatoes)
Dessert : Creme Brulee
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| From Christmas eve dinner at London Oxford Street |
We also had a glass of wine each (red wine for him, white wine for me). After a sumptuous Christmas eve dinner, we headed back on the underground to our hotel and managed to take photos of the items we purchased. Jetlag and the cool weather ensured we feel asleep really fast on our first night in London.
