Christmas in London

Sick of hearing our limited selection of Christmas songs over and over, Leah & I decided to download a few new ones from iTunes today. For some reason, in the Weatherill-Down household, the staple Christmas album was always “Once Upon a Christmas” by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. This is a collection of your favourite holiday songs sung in a country style, that Leah quite rightly hates.

But to humour me she searched iTunes for “Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton”. iTunes' response?

“Did you mean: Kenny Rogers in Dolly Parton? Your search returned no results.”

A Christmas miracle!

Cole's Arrival!

On December 6, 2006 (great day 6.12.06), my sister Sarah and her husband, Kevin, proudly welcomed their son, Cole Kevin Anseeuw, to the world. He arrived right on his due date and was 8 pounds 4 ounces.

Sarah went through the labour and delivery calmly and with grace, with Kevin by her side. They spent a few days in the hospital getting accustomed to the new addition to their family and they are now at home helping each other with the new responsibilities. John and I are proud and very impressed with both of them.

John and I are very excited to have become uncle and aunt to such an adorable baby! (We still love you too Callie.)

Congratulations Sarah and Kevin! Welcome Cole!

Bratislava, Slovakia & Vienna, Austria

We’re back to our cute little London flat after another great weekend of traveling. This time we flew to Bratislava, Slovakia, had a day trip to Vienna, Austria from there and we were joined by our new Aussie friends, Jess and Andrew (their website, www.fushmush.net).

We arrived in Bratislava late on Thursday night and made our way to our hostel. It was in a neat old building and we got our first private, double room. Going forward, I think I will be adopting Jess’ motto of “I don’t do dorm rooms”. It was for sure worth the extra money to get a better sleep and to be able to spread our stuff out without having to repack it and store it in a locker all the time.

We did our first walk through the “old town” and into the main square where the Christmas markets were set up. We found a little restaurant for a late dinner and some cheap, good quality beer.

Bratislava is a smaller city with about 450,000 people. We were surprisingly impressed by the historic buildings in the old town but what we found most interesting were the remnants of communist rule. The old buildings are not restored to perfection like in Salzburg. The old town and the hilltop fortress/castle are situated on the north side of the Danube River and in contrast, on the south side of the river, as far as you can see are communist era apartment blocks. Before our trip we didn’t getting any rave reviews about Bratislava but we enjoyed it and appreciated it.

On Friday we had a leisurely morning, enjoying breakfast and wandering the Christmas markets. We walked along the Danube and then up to the hill top castle, which resembles an upside down table. One of the main sights from the castle is a tower on the bridge with a UFO shaped viewing area on top. It was calling our names so we ventured up it. From there we had a great view back at the castle, to the west into the Austrian hills (only three kilometers away), and to south the gray, endless apartment blocks.

We did a walking tour, which wasn’t much to rave about. We were hoping for a bit more information on recent history. Then we found a restaurant with neat, dark ambience and enjoyed some traditional Slovakian fare.

After that, we managed to get on the right tram and find our way to the Samsung Arena for a Slovakian Extraliga hockey game! HC Slovan Bratislava vs MS HK Zilina. Tickets were $4 and a beer was $1. Can’t get that in Canada!

The game was in an old Communist era arena, purpose built for something, not hockey, nor for merchandising and food/bev sales. We swarmed outside the doors to get in the small entrance. There was no concourse, and only a few places for beer stands to be squeezed in. Unfortunately, John was unable to find a place to buy a t-shirt anywhere. Aside from a few puck bunnies and the cheerleaders (more on that below), Jess and I were the only women there.

We got the tickets thinking they were in a great location; centre ice, not too far up. However, we did not expect to end up with the four worst seats in the arena! The seats were split, two on each side of a media platform, thus blocking the view of half the rink when sitting. The other half of the view was blocked by one of the many large red pillars that surrounded the arena in order to keep the roof up. Luckily, it wasn’t a sell out so we just moved into a corner with a great view.
It was Jess and Andrew’s first ever hockey game and they chose to cheer for Zilina, because Zilina had Australia colours on. John and I jumped on the home team’s band wagon and joined in with the constantly cheering fans (way more vocal than any Canuck game, and only a third of the spectators). There were two early goals making it a tie game, and then two late goals to keep it tied. HC Slovan Bratislava managed to pull out a victory in over time!

Unlike NHL hockey games, there were cheerleaders/dancers performing in the aisles. They reminded me of CFL cheerleaders, but slightly less talented and slightly more provocative. They performed a combination of step aerobics and musical chairs; step aerobics routines to the music in between plays and then as soon as the music stopped (and play resumed) they would sit down as fast as possible.

I found the whole experience very entertaining. It was likely the highlight of John’s time in Europe so far, but probably only increased how much he misses watching and playing the game.

Sunday we got up in good time and caught the 1 hour train to Vienna, Austria. (Round trip tickets EUR7, same price as a day pass for London transit.) Salzburg was grand on a small scale; Vienna was grand on a very large scale! We loved it too! There were impressive palaces, a majestic opera house, strikingly Roman Parliament buildings, luxurious hotels all lit up; I wish you could picture it as I do.

The Christmas markets were in full swing, packed with people, and much more significant than in Bratislava. The main market was set up in front of the town hall. The trees in front of the town hall all had large, lighted ornaments hanging in their branches. The windows in the gothic town hall were numbered 1-24, with one being opened every day revealing a picture. The best Advent Calendar I’ve ever seen!

We started the day with a trip around the centre of town on a tram to get an overview of the city’s sights, but more importantly to find a Starbucks for John. He was very desperate for caffeine. We all owe thanks to Jess for spotting one. After being sufficiently caffeinated, John was a new man, and we made our way through the heart of Vienna; past its big church, through the pedestrian shopping streets decked out with lights for Christmas, by the main palace.

We cruised through the smaller Christmas market and indulged in garlic hashbrown pancakes. Then we spent some time in the larger market, in front of the town hall; many different Christmas wares were for sale, along with mulled wine and local delicacies. We chose not to indulge in any mulled wine (see the Salzburg blog), however J&A enjoyed some. We did try roasted chestnuts for the first time (we have seen kiosks selling them in every city since Ljubljana so it was about time). For lunch we managed to find a table at the popular Einstein restaurant, and we warmed up over beer and wiener schnitzel.

After all that food, we had to burn off a few calories so we tossed a Frisbee around in front of the town hall. A&J are our teammates on our new Ultimate team, the Fugazees and like us, their previous team back home was called the Chuckers. Because we hadn’t had enough exercise, we decided pay EUR3 to walk up the skinny spiral staircase to the top of the church tower so we could have a view of Vienna. We were very disappointed when we reached the top. We were expecting to be able to go outside on a viewing platform, but there wasn’t one. Instead we had to look through windows in a small room in the tower which housed a gift shop and 75% of the windows were partially blocked by scaffolding.

It was dark by then and the city was lit up beautifully! We walked and trammed to Hotel Sacher to have some Sacher Torte. A&J got to cross both wiener schnitzel and the world famous torte off their lists. (John and I had never even heard of the torte before.)

We arrived back in Bratislava around 9:00 and enjoyed a light dinner, some more good cheap beer (Vienna was more expensive than Bratislava, and Andrew and John had to work at getting their average beer cost back down) and some great conversation before hitting the sack.

We left early Sunday and made the long trek back to London. It takes about the same amount of time to get from the airports to our home as it does to fly to these European cities. It was a fabulous weekend of exploring two different cities, but what made the trip were our traveling companions. Thanks for joining us A&J!

We’re looking forward to our next trip – Christmas in Denmark!