Thanksgiving serves as a very important buffer between Halloween and Christmas. It’s the transitional holiday- still celebrating fall, but moving into the sentimental aspects of gratitude, familial relationships, etc.
Britain has no buffer. Therefore– it’s officially Christmastime in London!
The season kicked off last Tuesday with the World Premier of the latest Disney movie, A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey. Now, if you know my family well, you know that we are all pretty big Carrey fans. And if you know me at all, you know I’m also a Charles Dickens fan. So combining Jim Carrey and Charles Dickens just sounded like the greatest idea in the world!
I woke up Tuesday morning stoked and ready for the premier and London’s festivities. It would be the 50th anniversary of the Oxford Circus lights, which would be switched on by honorary guests from the film. This caused a little bit of a division in the attic, since some wanted to go to Regents Street to see Colin Firth and some wanted to go to St. Paul’s to see the other guy who obviously isn’t important because I don’t know his name. I, of course, wanted to go to Oxford Circus itself- where the main event would take place and where Jim Carrey and the director of the film, Robert Zemeckis, would light up the main street.
So I after my run I dutifully started my laundry downstairs and then started getting myself ready for the big day. Before we could do anything else I had some school assignments to complete at the British Library and Sarah wanted to go with me just because it’s a cool place. Knowing that we needed to hurry in order to get good spots on Oxford Circus, I opened the drawer under my bed to find some jeans. Oh…
“Um, I just realized that I put every pair of jeans that I own into the wash,” I told Sarah, who promptly laughed and made fun of me for a straight five minutes. That is, until she gasped and said, “Wait… crap! All my jeans are in the wash too!”
We’re both geniuses.
Having no time to wait around for hours for our clothes to get through the laundry, we settled for skirts. I’m not the biggest fan. Somehow we both ended up in grey and Sarah said, “We look like Jehovah's Witnesses!” We thought everyone in the room was dead asleep, but at that comment Alex burst into laughter from her top bunk.
To avoid anyone else on the street having the same reaction as Alex, Sarah graciously changed into a different sweater.
Once that was settled we went to grab some lunch at my favorite restaurant in the world: Nandos!
Nandos is Puerto Rican food turned European. If you like spicy, Nandos is the place for you. No- they aren’t paying me to advertise. They don’t even need to advertise- they are that good. Their peri-peri sauce is legendary, but I have been slowly spreading a beanie pita craze around the Centre. It’s vegetarian, but all of the meat lovers who have tried it have fallen fast in love with it and have abandoned their chicken wraps, peri-peri sauce and all. And I am obsessed with their grilled corn on the cob. Ask anyone in the attic, whenever the question, “Where should we eat?” arises, I am always suggesting Nandos. I could eat there every day for the rest of my life and die happy.
After I got my Nandos fix we took the Circle line to King’s Cross and headed for the British Library. This is seriously one of my favorite places in all of England. The building isn’t super old, like you would expect it to be, because the library has always been in the British Museum up until the last few decades.
The Library has over 150 million items in every known language and every known format ever to exist. The only library that beats this one is the American Library of Congress. But their collection of books is growing every day because the Library receives copies of all books produced within the UK and the Rep. of Ireland. Basically, you can find anything at the BL.
I filled out the rest of my notebook as I looked at the sole surviving manuscript of the original Beowulf or the original The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, which was really just story written in a notebook for a little girl with no initial intentions of publication. They had ancient Qur’ans, Bibles, religious Egyptian scrolls, etc. that dated back to 300 BC. One of the three surviving Magna Cartas has it’s own special room. But one of my favorite things was an old parchment scroll that had different coats of arms pained on it to list all of the upper-class families in the medieval era. For a brief moment I felt like Heath Ledger was going to show up in his Knight’s Tale attire. That would have been sweet.
Sarah and I spent three and a half hours in that one small section, even though my actual assignment only took me about ten minutes. The only way thing that eventually tore me away was the fact that I didn’t want to miss London’s Christmas kickoff.
So we got back on the tube and fought our way through the crowded streets and toward the giant screen in the middle of Oxford Circus. Bobbies in their yellow jackets and funny hats were blocking off the roads in preparation. I couldn’t believe how many people were there. But once we made it to the actual stage it wasn’t so bad. There were five or eight rows of people casually spaced in front of the stage. I was tempted to wander between these people until we could get all the way to the front, but Sarah talked me out of it. She’s too sweet and thoughtful.
Nah, but it was probably a good idea to stay put. And by the time it started getting dark I realized what great places we had.
I really only have two shots where you can begin to grasp how many people were there. Here is the video… look how many people are behind us- and this is still an hour before the show started.
Cameras kept swinging over our heads and we decided we wanted to be seen. So I got out the glow sticks that I had leftover from Mom’s Halloween package and we made ourselves necklaces and bracelets. If you ever see footage of this night look for the pink and blue glowing things. That’s us.
We had planned to meet up with some other girls, but it was so crowded that everyone was body to body. I’m pretty sure we would have started a riot if we tried to get a friend to wiggle her way to the front. I couldn’t hear anything on my cell phone either. We just had to be content with the Christmas music being played throughout the streets and messing with our glow sticks until the event started.
If you’re tired of reading, click here for the video of the event.
http://www.thenewsmarket.com/london?bcpid=9787667001&bctid=48000166001
If you aren’t tired of reading, click it anyway. It’s a good depiction of what it was like.
We got to watch the cast of Sister Act sing and dance around a bit, followed by three UK pop star groups. One group was basically like a modern Spice Girls. Sarah hated them, but for me it brought back great memories of my first concert- haha!
But this guy named Taio Cruz was actually really good. We were singing along with him by the end. There were some other famous people that we’d never heard of because they aren’t famous in the U.S. Luckily for us, this guy next to Sarah was more than willing to explain anything and everything into her ear…which she then passed on to me! The stars were from British TV shows etc.
When Jim Carrey came out on stage to pull the switch I was pretty excited… until I saw the growth on his face.
What the?
I wasn’t a fan of the giant bush, but maybe it was for a movie he’s currently filming… maybe he’s playing an ugly mountain man?
But of course he was goofing off and being hilarious the whole time he was up there. He kept pretending he was going to pull the switch at the wrong time or he kept leaning into the microphone when someone else was speaking. He reminded me of Zac… weird.
When he was finally given the microphone he personally thanked Britain for producing a writer as amazing as Charles Dickens. I agreed with a cheer. Then he told us all to “beam our Christmas spirits up to that satellite” and he pointed over his head, “so that the world can feel it.”
Very inspiring, Jim. Nice.
Then we began the countdown. It felt like New Years! 3…2…1… and then the street was suddenly blazing and confetti was flying everywhere. Cheering and jumping around- it was crazy!
And here is what London looks like now that the lights are on. Courtesy of google images.
Everyone calmed down once Andrea Bocelli flashed onto the giant screen. He was preparing to sing from St. Paul’s with the St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir and was being broadcasted live and about 20 feet tall in front of us. The audience was asked to join in, and so 14,000 voices sang Silent Night throughout the streets of London. It was incredible. I’m positive that not all of those people were devout or weren’t even Christian, but still they were singing and no one was throwing a fit about how the song was about Christ. I definitely felt the Christmas spirit then, with all of us singing together from all different backgrounds… don’t forget, London is a melting pot. Sarah and I both absolutely loved it.
We made a new World Guinness record! The Guinness Records man came out on stage and informed us that we were the most people to ever sing a Christmas carol. Then a plaque was presented to… well to us, but I doubt I’ll ever see it again, haha! So if you get the book for 2009… Sarah and I are in there! Glow sticks and all!
We hurried through the dispersing crowd toward Leister Square, where the Premiere was being held. There were three theaters that were showing it, but only one had a big red carpet.
However, as we walked (and avoided overly-forward guys) we were distracted by a tall toy store with the cutest Christmas display windows of all time. Hamley’s is a famous toy store with like 8 floors! We skipped the elevator and went straight up the stairs, which was like a journey through Narnia. Sarah was following me with a camera through my adventure.
We decided to grab some dinner in the café on the top floor. Too bad the girl working there was a pain in the butt. In the end we overpaid for little scraps of sandwiches with crisps (or chips). But it was good to have something in our stomachs. We meant to take the escalators quickly down and out but we seemed to get distracted on every floor. Floor 6: girl’s toys, floor 4: toddler toys, floor 2: soft toys, etc.
When we finally got to Leicester Square there were only a few people still on the red carpet. They were people in glittering dresses that I didn’t recognize. We stuck around for a little while, but Bobbies kept moving us along so we couldn’t stay. Instead I took a picture with Jim Carrey’s plaque of his remarkably small hands. (My size!)
When we were getting some gelato down the street we heard screaming… so maybe someone super famous was walking down at that moment? We missed it. But it was worth it. Mmmm raspberry!
And then we snagged a cardboard poster off of one of the fences. It now decorates our attic. What? Everyone was doing it…
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Since I am on the topic of Christmas, I will be skipping forward a few days to the Christmas parade on Saturday morning.
Sarah absolutely loves Christmas like no one I’ve ever met. Obsessed. It’s great! Even if she does wake me up in the dark hours of 5:30 to go to a parade…
All jokes aside– I’m glad that we did! We walked through Hyde Park to Basil street, right on the corner of Harrod’s, which is the most popular (and expensive) mall in London.
The purpose of the parade was to welcome “Father Christmas” to Harrod’s. Of course, to actually be able to go into the mall and sit on his lap you have to book an appointment-, which was completely booked out for this season. Isn’t that crazy?
But we weren’t there to go into the mall; we just wanted to experience an English parade. It started at 8 but we were there by 6:45 to stake out a good spot. Amazingly, there were already people lined up and we barely found a little section of fence for us to lean against. Sarah quickly gave up her spot to a cute little kid who spent the next few hours making sure his balloon was smacking me in the face at all times.
So with Sarah behind me, it was up to me to take pictures. But everything was so funny in person I ended up taking tons of videos. I hope you enjoy them!
Remember what I said about no barrier between Christmas and Halloween? The result: they melt together.
A lot of people had a red dot on their nose, which confused me. Christmas tradition in England? Or maybe it relates to Harrod's? Anyone know?
People kept letting their balloons go, so the sky was dotted with them. Unfortunately, the little kid beside me had a really good grip on his. I was super tempted to rip it out of his hands and let it float away... but I figured that wouldn't have been very nice to do at a Christmas parade.
They have out free candy and stuff! Yay! Oh- and notice the fake snow.
Lots of carriages and random people in wigs...?
Ever wonder what Santa's secret service looks like?
He may look tough, but he isn't doing a very good job. I mean look– Mr. Harrod is karate chopping Santa in the head!
This video makes Sarah and I crack up every time. I mean... what kind of person is a present for a day job? He really wanted me to take a picture of him so he stood in front of me waiting for a flash from my camera for like a full three minutes.
After the parade was over everyone was flooding into the building. Sarah and I got caught in the waves of bodies and ended up inside as well. It was m first time inside and I can't believe what I've been missing! Harrod's is huge and so cool! I mean, just look at the little doormen they have!
There was an entire floor dedicated to pets. So if you ever want a diamond collar for your cat or a 1,200 pound "master bed" for your dog, I would recommend Harrod's.
We went to Christmas Land on the fourth floor for a little while but we really needed to get moving since we had planned to go to the wax museum that day. Sarah and I want to go back soon. Another adventure for another day.
weirdo...
I love it!!! I am a big parade fan and this one looked exceptional...the bubbles...love bubbles and the cute guy with the juggler....fun fun fun....I wish I were you! You are amazing.....what a wonderful experience...beyond my comprehension;O)
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