Festive Christmas in London

London really knows how to do Christmas.  Selfridges department store on Oxford Street:

The Churchill Arms pub in Kensington:

Kim and I joined another friend Liz for brunch...

And then the Christmas Carol Singalong concert at Royal Albert Hall!  I got this pic after the concert was over, so you can't see all the people but it was a hilarious and fun afternoon.  Everyone sang to many traditional and fun carols.  Lots of people in the audience dressed up in funny Christmas sweaters or costumes, some even brought their own lights to decorate their seats and boxes!

We spent the rest of the evening at a nearby pub, celebrating a birthday and catching up with old friends.  I love our Christmas gear!

Warsaw at Christmas

So Warsaw wasn't properly a part of my Christmas Market 2014 weekend, but I did take a work trip there immediately following.  And got to benefit from seeing their city all decked out for the holidays!  This is the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

The President's house.

Ice rink in the old city center.

My friend Kim from New York joined me in Warsaw!  She came from visiting another friend in Paris, then we had some fun in Warsaw and finally went back to London for the weekend.  Kim was my roommate for awhile way back in my NYC days and also travelled together to Turkey in 2011.  I love seeing this girl and travelling with her!!

Many of my work colleagues - some from Warsaw and some from other places!

Colmar Christmas Market

After spending the night in Heidelberg, we drove back to Basel via the other side of the border and stopped at our first French Chrstimas market in Colmar. 

I can't even tell you how much I loved this little town and my pictures don't begin to do it justice. Go to Pinterest immediately and search for Colmar, France. It is full of these timbered, painted houses.  Some have said Colmar was the inspiration for the "poor provincial town" where Belle lived in Beauty & the Beast!

Hand-painted glass blown ornaments...

Decorated store fronts...

Not necessarily Christmas market related, but these are ski-boot-slippers!

And a ski Christmas tree!

Pretzels - you could either get the regular salted ones, or a "bretzel sucres" which had sugar on it - yummy!

My personal favorite snack - a lemon macaron!  These were from a handmade little bakery and had a somewhat chunky texture rather than the really smooth macarons you usually see.  I loved them!

A better view of some of the painted houses.

In France, the drinks menu included hot wine, apple cider and hot chocolate!

One happy girl feeling the Christmas spirit in this beautiful town!

Heidelberg Christmas Market

After visiting Frieburg in the day, we drove on another ninety minutes to Heidelberg.  Heidelberg is one of the first places I visited in Europe when I was in high school.  It was mostly completely unrecognizable to me (although to be fair, probably just because I can't remember many details!). Loved this giant decoration!  You could buy these little wooden windmills in many of the shops and this was a giant version that hosted a bar underneath. 

Heidelberg's market was strung out through the old city center, in several small squares.  This was my favorite with all the beautiful Christmas trees and lights!

Group selfie!  A little tough to get the lighting right, but captures the festive spirit all the same!

Market dinner including bratwurst, among other wursts - what else?!

And we couldn't leave without a sample of toasting hot gluhwein!  I'm getting a nice collection of the souvenir gluhwein mugs from my Christmas market adventures!!

Freiburg Christmas Market

August seems like the perfect time to finish posts that I drafted months ago about a trip that was even months before that!  So without further delay, let me show you my Christmas Market trip...of 2014. This year we flew into Basel, Switzerland, which sits on the border of Germany, Switzerland and France. Our first market stop was in Freiburg, Germany. 

I am learning that while most Christmas markets have some basic similarities, each town has their own unique personality.  Freiburg had a big market in one main square, then another smaller kid-oriented market in this square. 

Ornaments galore!

I wish the weather had been a little nicer to see the views outside of town. Freiburg in near the Black Forest in Germany, so there were very dense forested hills nearby.  The clouds added the ambiance in person, but made capturing in a photo quite difficult.  My best attempt...

I love when the man-hole covers are unique to a city!

A Family Thanksgiving

I had a week in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving.  Birthday dinner with Nicole and my sister-in-law Sarah.

Anne and her family came down for Thanksgiving as well.  Here is Nathan, climbing some trees down the street...

Not to be out-done, Preston joined Nathan in the tree!

Kendall was happy to stay on the slide.

As was Grace, showing off her balancing skills!

You know we went Black Friday shopping!  Actually, this was on Thanksgiving evening at Wal-Mart (I know, shame us if you want to - those TVs were cheap!). That's a selfie that says "we just ate a big meal and now we are shopping and won the jackpot"!  The Stunk ladies conquer Black Friday again.

Nathan and Grace (along with Anne and Dan) dropped me off at the airport to head home!

How nice are these windows in the OKC airport?  They had them for several famous Oklahomans.  We have such a nice airport these days!!

Boomer Sooner!!!

This year my birthday fell on the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  Christmas flights were SO expensive that I decided to do a Thanksgiving trip to Oklahoma instead.  The timing worked out that there was a home OU football game - winning!! 

This was my first game in about three years.  Mark, Preston and Kendall came along with me.  Getting our rain jackets ready...

Yeah, rain jackets.  Too bad it POURED all morning before the game.  The start was delayed by almost two hours, but we didn't know that until we arrived.  We spent that time hanging out underneath the stadium, attempting to stay dry.  Preston and I went on an adventure and found cotton candy!  They loved hearing the band (as did I!).  But when the game finally began, we were all soaked and only made it through the first quarter. FAIL.  Ah well!

 

On our walk back to the car, we saw Kansas fans also leaving early.  Mark said "man, that would suck to have come all the way from Kansas and be rained out and leave early."  I gave him a look.  Right.  Those poor people coming from KANSAS, right next door, with no flights involved and no oceans in the way.  Poor them.  Ha ha ha!!  He did catch the irony of that immediately. 

We were smiling when we got back to the car and started warming up!  And the Sooners did win, so it was all good.  Better luck next time!

Halloween in Atlanta

Had to make an annual visit back to Atlanta for work in late October.  The timing meant I was able to spend Halloween there with friends!  Me and Wendy...

Wendy and her family are always kind enough to let me stay with them when I'm in Atlanta, which is a million times better than staying in a hotel.  Just look at her dog Caesar - he was all decked out for Halloween too!

Got some nice candy bags at work!  A fun time to visit as Halloween isn't quite such a big thing in London. 

One day in Athens

When Nicole originally booked her trip to London, we thought we might take an overnight trip to Bath and Oxford, which are both just an couple of hours by train.  However I had a work conflict that came up and I needed to be at some meetings in Cyprus for two days.  So we took a flight instead! 

The two days in Cyprus I was quite busy with work, but the conference was at a very nice beach hotel!  So Nicole enjoyed the beach, the pool and the spa for a couple of days.  We also had a big night out for dinner with my colleagues and they invited Nicole along and were delighted to talk with both of us. 

The day we flew back to London, I scheduled our flight to connect through Athens, Greece and we had a twelve hour layover.  So yeah, we are kinda rock stars to just spend a day in Athens!  First stop - the Acropolis and the Parthenon!

View over the city from the Acropolis

We were glad to see the Acropolis in the morning - it was more crowded and hotter as the day went on!

The Temple of Nike was my favorite - can't really say why, I just liked it!

After the Acropolis, we made our way down into the city and found a café for lunch.  How amazing does this food look?!

It was delicious and the waiter was super nice to us.  Even brought us a second glass of wine, on the house! 

We did a bit more wandering and window shopping, then made a second stop for ice cream.  Best days ever when its hot enough for ice cream!!

We had a great day and although it was exhausting, I'm so glad we made the effort to see another city!