Happy Holland-Days!

I do apologise for the dreadful pun.  I've been spending the Christmas/New Year break in Lelystad, Holland with my boyfriend and thought I'd share some of what I've/we've been up to.  I liked these Christmas decorations at Gatwick airport, there's even a mini Harrods store, without the crowds or getting lost (I think I've been to Harrods at least five times now, and I still get lost in there)!

We did some Christmas shopping at the Lelystad town centre the other day, I thought these window displays were absolutely stunning!!

Perhaps not terribly practical for wear though.

I also got to attend Dennis's work Christmas dinner the Friday night before Christmas, which was quite fun. Met his workmates at this groovy little restaurant in Lelystad.

Those 'curlers' in her hair are lemons.

The menu covers were really cool (although not sure how they related to the food!) and the toilet doors were hilarious!

The food was pretty tasty too! Here are our entrees:

My beef and bean sprout salad was delicious, if a little salty.  I tried Dennis's carpaccio which was also lovely.  For main I stuck with a plain schnitzel and mushroom sauce which was a little underwhelming, but hey, it was free (the coleslaw and chips were yummy)!

But oh, the dessert made up for it! Mine was called "Loving Choco" - a warm chocolate muffin with caramel fudge AND warm chocolate sauce, with whipped cream and vanilla ice-cream!! Mmmm heaven!  

Those little white things (Dennis joked that they were cigarette butts) were the texture of musk lollies but a different flavour. Not sure what they were but they tasted nice! Dennis had an epic ice-cream plate.

If you're ever in Holland and want to visit, the restaurant is called De Rede and the Lelystad webpage can be found here.  It's all in Dutch though!

Spent Christmas Day with Dennis's family, had a yummy brunch and just hung out for the day, nice and relaxed.  Their Christmas tree was so pretty!

We went back again for New Year's Eve and ate oliebollen and apple fritters and played trivial pursuit with the neighbours.  In Holland anybody can buy fireworks and let them off, the two weeks before Christmas I was constantly jumping when kids let random fireworks off in the street (sounded like we were living in a war zone with bombs going off all the time!) which Dennis found very amusing. So at midnight on New Year's we went and stood in the street outside his parent's house and watched fireworks going off in every direction all around us.  It was pretty cool, but also cold and raining so we went back inside.

Another day we had a little outing, went for a ride to the harbour to see a replica of The Batavia.  The Batavia is famous for being shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1629 and some of the crew then mutinied and butchered many of the other survivors. I actually used to live near the Batavia Coast in Western Australia and I've seen the wreckage of the original ship at the Maritime Museum in Geraldton, so I was very interested in seeing the replica in it's homeland!

There is also a pretty cool shopping outlet just next to the ship so we went and had a look.  I liked how it was ship-themed, with cannons in the walls and a whale sculpture for kids to play on.

There was even a fake ice-skating rink!

There were some interesting sculptures in the area as well.  The wooden one is supposed to resemble the struts of a ship and the white head thing is apparently something to do with the founder of Lelystad.  Not sure what the squatting man is all about though.

Winter Wonderland

So it's Christmas Eve and I am in Holland staying with my boyfriend for the holiday, but I wanted to share the festive sights of London with you! The day before I left London I went on a photography mission: to capture shots of the Christmas decorations around the city and at Hyde Park's "Winter Wonderland".  It was actually a really foggy morning when I got up but by the time I'd caught the tube into the city the fog had all disappeared and the sun came out.  It was nice but still reaaalllly cold!

My first stop was to see the giant tree and Rudolph topiary statue at Covent Garden.  I was also quite charmed by the lego models of London landmarks, complete with lego Santas!

I then moved onto Piccadilly to get a shot of the Eros statue transformed into a snow globe, and the Fortnum and Maison Christmas window displays. Unfortunately the reflection meant the window displays didn't turn out very well, but I've included a couple of shots anyway, hopefully you can get a bit of an idea how detailed their dioramas are.

Also had to include these lovely Christmas ornaments/sculptures by Lladro for my Gran:

I wonder if Papa would turn this baby Jesus onto his head?! (Family joke - my grandfather always turns the baby Jesus in his crib onto his head when nobody's looking, or hides the Jesus and puts the cow in the middle of all the people - the heathen!)

Then I wandered through the trees towards Hyde Park. It's officially winter now, but still looking very Autumn-y:

Arrived at Hyde Park at last! So many stalls full of charming Christmas gift ideas! So many rides! So many Christmas themed Bars! Ice skating, and hot chocolate, and roasted marshmallows (oh my)! I was in Christmassy Heaven!

I had a delicious pork roll with crackling and apple sauce from The Jolly Hog stall. Yum!

This moose's head was moving and singing!

You could sit in this moving carousel bar!

On my way home I figured I'd stop off at Westminster and see if they did any Christmas decorations in that area as well.  They don't, but I got some lovely shots of sunset over the Thames and Houses of Parliament anyway.

I am a little bit jealous of all my friends back home posting photos and facebook statuses about how lovely and hot it is in Australia, but even with the cold, Christmas time over here is quite magical! Hope everyone has a lovely Christmas with their loved ones.  I'm planning to do some Christmas baking for Christmas Day with Dennis's family, and looking forward to a Dutch Christmas!

I did receive some lovely Aussie Christmas cheer though, I think this is my favourite Christmas card so far!

Merry Christmas everybody! xx