Christmas Day was more hectic than it's been in the last couple of years, as my dad's mother joined us as well as my mother's brother and his family! My mum always cooks an incredible Christmas roast (the pigs in blankets are my responsibility!), and having lots of visitors means she gets rather stressed. Despite this, it was a somewhat relaxing day - full of food and presents! Check out this, ahem, awesome mug my sister's boyfriend got me. It was probably beaten by the Urban Decay Naked Palette that was actually on my wishlist!
If you're following me on Instagram, you'll have seen my daily posts documenting how my boyfriend and I have been spending his time here. We were lucky enough to get to London for a few days, managing to squeeze in the British Museum, doughnuts at Crosstown (found via Instagram but actually quite disappointing, wahhh), the Disney tree at St. Pancras station, Platform 9 & 3/4, and the Museum of London - which I highly recommend for anyone who can find some museums too wordy/stuffy. We stayed in a "hub by Premier Inn" hotel, which is marketed as "the first app-only hotel". I was just looking for a cheap, central hotel and found it via Premier Inn's website, but we were both really impressed! The rooms are very compact, but designed to still be functional (drawers under the bed, streamlined wardrobe, etc.) and can be completely controlled via an app you download to your phone. It definitely needs some tidying up - there were several glitches with the technology side of things - and I couldn't stay in our room for multiple nights as there wasn't a window, but for £75 and being right next to the Tower of London, it was exactly what we needed.
Finally, we rang in the New Year at Whitstable, in Kent. My dad's brother lives there with his new(ish) wife, and they were having a get together at their house. My boyfriend likes to be somewhere different every New Year, as it's his favourite holiday: in 2013/14 he was in Quebec; we went to Wales last year (2014/15) to see friends of mine; so this year we visited the English seaside. Before night fell, we took a trip to a theme park I used to go to when I was young (because my mum went when she was young!) - Dreamland! You might've heard about it's revival; its heyday was in the Seventies when people still holidayed within England, but it gradually fell into decline and was eventually closed in 2005. Then in 2008 a fire destroyed much of the only ride left: the Grade-II (now Grade II*) listed Scenic Railway, and a revival plan didn't come to fruition until 2015 - it reopened in June. It was awesome going back somewhere with so many childhood memories, and we rode the Scenic Railway again! My boyfriend always makes video montages of our visits and he took some great GoPro footage on the ride so I'm hoping to be able to share that soon.
New Year's Eve night was hilarious but pretty uneventful; the adults all started way too early and had to take various breaks throughout the evening in order to make it to midnight! In contrast, we paced ourselves and managed to be present and correct for fireworks on the beach with Big Ben on iPlayer in the background. I liked how casual and relaxed everything was, and the next day we did our traditional New Year's Day fish and chips and walk on the beach - along with a little mooch around the cute little shops in Whitstable for those of us not too worse for wear!
What did you guys get up to? Let me know in the comments! I hope everyone had a great few weeks, whether you celebrated or not.
The boyfriend leaves on Sunday (crying face emoji) but I'm excited to have some time to start putting together a mega Prague post!
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