What a fun day!  Justin and I started the day with an early brunch** at The Elk in the Woods, which is just a few doors down from my flat.  (**Justin claims that anything before 10am doesn’t qualify as brunch and must be called breakfast; I’m just going to call it early brunch.)  The grilled avocado with poached eggs was incredible.

Pancakes with blueberry ice cream and bacon

Grilled avocado with poached eggs, fresh cheese, and spicy sauce

While we were eating, Amanda was landing at Heathrow and making her way to my flat.  We waited for her eagerly, thinking every rolley-bag we heard on the pavement might be her.  When she finally arrived we gave her a quick tour of the flat, an hour on her own to freshen up while we ran a couple errands, and then met back up for a lunch of German sausage.

Having discovered that we were inadequately dressed for the weather, we went back to the flat and added another layer before taking the bus down to Hyde Park to visit the Winter Wonderland extravaganza.  Think “giant glitzy carnival meets Bavarian Christmas market” and you’ll have a rough sense of what it was like.  We wandered through the crowds and basically just made a bee-line to all the fried dough we could find.

It was crowded and fun and we left knowing that our sugar highs were likely to wear off before we made it home for Christmas Eve dinner.