Christmas is Coming [feat. Moving Flats]

December in London marks the onset of Christmas festivities!

I have to say that one of the best things about the cold weather over here is that everything does seem so much more festive in the winter! There is so much happening, from Christmas trees being sold, ice skating rinks, winter wonderlands, Christmas street markets and plenty of mulled wines and ciders about!

Michael and I went for a wander along Oxford Street one night, this is famous for its Christmas lights, which are turned on mid November and every year they are different.

They actually don't look that amazing in the photos but they actually look fantastic in person!

I headed out to an amazing and kind of secret high rise cocktail bar in London with my lovely friend Iona. It was the strangest set up, Paramount is located at the very top of an office building, which is currently under construction, so it's very inconspicuous and would be very easy to miss. We had to get our names ticked off the list on our way in and then headed into an elevator. Upon getting off the elevator we were greeted by a super fancy and completely luxurious cocktail bar with a beautiful 360 degree view of the city of London!

I enjoyed an amazing cockail (or two... they were expensive) and we savoured the amazing views of beautiful London.

London is such a beautiful city and even more gorgeous at night when everything is lit up, this bar had the most stunning views of the entire city - the London Eye was a pretty big stand out though!

These pictures are of myself and my beautiful friend Iona enjoying the view!

New Apartment

In rather big news Michael and I have moved apartments! It was definitely time for us to move out of our not so clean apartment and into a place with other people who actually have jobs and don't get stoned on weeknights (yes, I was very glad to move). We got VERY lucky as we have moved into the most gorgeous apartment in Shoreditch!

As you can see our living room is huge and the couch is ridiculously comfortable. The apartment is located right off the famous Brick Lane (which hosts a very popular market every Sunday and is well know as the place to get a curry in London), it's in a really cool part of East London, super central but also really quiet at night and super close to heaps of really fun bars and pubs.

More pics of our lovely lounge and Michael chilling!

Our kitchen is also huge and amazing! We have our own fridge and even a dishwasher (which is like a luxury in London flats), the washing machine is even in a separate room and not in the kitchen (which is pretty much unheard of in London!).

I know these pictures aren't too exciting but I am still basking in the glow of our new lovely flat (which I have actually been living in for almost a month now).

Our amazing and HUGE bedroom! We have a king bed with a pillowtop mattress (super comfy) and three wardrobes, as you can see I am barely filling mine!

Just took this photo to give you an idea of how much room we have and straight ahead is the front door.

Final shot of our amazing room! Loving that we have carpet and we bought brand new fresh sheets for our king bed (as well as some ikea bedside tables). We could not be happier in our lovely new flat, our new flat mates are super nice and we are really enjoying living here. It's really convenient for both of us for work as well, which is only a bonus!

Monopoly Pub Crawl

When we first came over to London we came through a company that deals with our specific kind of visa, however, they also do social events so Michael and I signed up for a free Christmas themed Monopoly Pub crawl! It was part pub crawl, part scavenger hunt, part race. We had to hit a certain amount of pubs and have drinks at each, while also completing other random challenges.

Some pictures of the first two pubs we stopped and had drinks at - I don't know who that random man is... a friendly stranger whose mate took our photo! 

We had to get photo evidence with us and our team number at each pub - we got points awarded for each pub hit and each challenge completed (sounds more complicated than it was). In the bottom picture team 8 are posing for a jail photo (think Monopoly) and hitting another pub! We were on a team with some other random but lovely expats from Australia, New Zealand and the token Canadian =)

We hit a really cool bar towards the end of our crawl, they had half price cocktails for happy hour and we got a free shot with every drink purchased - bargain!

Michael and I with all our drinks that we paid £6.70 for ($11) - super cheap for 2 drinks and three shots! I do love happy hour in London. As you can see we got into the Christmas spirit and bought some super cool knit Christmas jumpers from Primark - mine had a penguins but Michael's was a super sexy 3D snowman!

Another fun shot of team 8 enjoying happy hour and our free shots = wining at life!

Some random photos of our team completing some challenges and hitting some pubs - we all had to fit into a phone booth and get a photo in front of the London Eye (bit dodgy but it's there).

As a result of my reasonable extreme competitiveness and everyone else's willingness to go along with it we won the Monopoly pub crawl challenge and got a £50 tab on the bar - which actually just meant we all ordered meals and a few drinks (it was a long day of drinking haha).

Thanks to our epic win our team will be featured in the next advertisement for the next Monopoly pub crawl organised by BritBound - I will be sure to post a copy of this pic!

A few other random photos!

Had some of my favourite teacher friends come over for some [a lot] of drinks in our new apartment - I may have had a touch too much to drink so the night out somewhat disintegrated after this photo was taken but at least we managed to get some photo evidence of a night semi-well spent.

The lovely Stacey enacting our favourite in-joke pun 'Sunday Slippers' - this won't make sense to anyone but it keeps us amused. We had definitely had a few drinks by this points but fortunately these two still look lovely!

My lovely friend Jess, who is way to tanned to be taking photos next to me!

Finally a few photos of us getting into the British spirit with a Sunday roast! We visited some Aussie friends and got into the London life by cooking a roast lamb on a Sunday afternoon! Top it off with cheese, wine and espresso martinis and you have my favourite way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

London is absolutely gorgeous in autumn, the parks here are so lovely and tree leaves are all orange and the grass is green. It is absolutely freezing but it's still beautiful. This photo was taken walking to my local supermarket at park called Weavers Fields, which is a gorgeous park in East London.

That's about all I have for now but we do have some fun things coming up, so stay tuned for:

- Christmas parties galore

- Christmas in Germany

- Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park

- Amsterdam in January