New Year's Eve in London

[Again doing a little catch up on the blog to get to the present moment...hopefully I'll be all caught up soon!]


Kent and I spent New Year's Eve in London - we figured it would be the first and last time to experience it there! After arriving back from NC on Dec 30th, we decided to do something relatively low key. Dinners out can be really expensive on NYE, even at a gastropub, so we went for a fancy dinner at home. Kent prepared the whole thing too! How lucky am I??

Here's a few pic of our awesome dinner. It turned out better than any restaurant!

[champagne cocktails - the French 75 - my only contribution to our meal]

[Appetizer course - scallops wrapped in thin ribbons of zucchini, flavored with orange. sooo good!!]





[Main course - Aged beef tenderloin from the grill, tuscan salad and fresh pasta with green peppercorn cream sauce. We had an awesome red wine we'd been saving for just the right steak. MMMMM]



After our long dinner, we ventured out to central London (the Tube was even free that night!). The crowd was so crazy - I have never seen so many people on the Strand or in Trafalgar Square!! The fireworks show was set to go off from the London Eye, just across the river from Embankment & Westminster. People seriously started lining up before 9pm! No way we were going to do that - it was so cold!! That, and we were still enjoying our awesome dinner. :-)



So we couldn't get a front row seat to the fireworks, so we decided to find a bar and have another drink and wait it out until midnight. A few minutes before the countdown, we joined the crowds in Trafalgar Square. They had set up huge screens to show the fireworks, and we could barely see the top of the fireworks over Big Ben. Pretty cool experience to be out there with the crowd! Here's a video of the fireworks display - really awesome coming off the London Eye and river boats. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy_9bx6U8_0

After the fireworks, the crowds were so massive that the Tube was way too crowded to even get there! We waited it out by walking most of the way home. It's so weird to see so many people walking down Piccadilly in the middle of the night, because London usually goes to sleep when the pubs close at 11pm.

All in all a fun night on the town!!