Little Christmas Eve

I came across the above phrase the other day when I was reading The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder, it was what one of the characters called the day before Christmas Eve and I thought that it was rather nice!

Well, today is the Little Christmas Eve and I have just come back from London!! Ann, Trish and I had the day in London - we specifically went so that we could go to the Royal Albert Hall to see Carols by Candlelight - performance started at 4:30pm.

However, the cheapest train that we could find was at 10:41am, but that was ok cos we decided that we would go to London and have lunch and perhaps visit Harrods or something before going on to the Royal Albert Hall.

Well, we got to London ok, although I had a moments panic when I realised just how frozen my car was when I left the house - it was doubly frozen - apparently we'd had rain in the middle of the night and it was really quite difficult to scrape off the side windows, but like I have said before - thank goodness for heated windscreens!! (mind you, the frost did actually look quite pretty!!)

We got to London and after a moments indecision we decided to go and find lunch in Harrods (!). While I am sure that most of you know that Harrods takes up a whole block, did you also know that there are umpteen restaurants!! At least one on each floor, with, I think, four on the top floor!! Anyway, we felt that we weren't posh enough for the Dress Circle restaurant, so we walked up to the fourth floor and hunted down Mo's Diner.

And I really do mean "hunted down" - it was surprisingly difficult to find!! We managed to find it in the end though after getting a few directions!! And it was exactly what you might expect of an American diner! I had a hotdog with chips and a vanilla milkshake, Trish had a spicy chicken wrap and Ann had soup and potato wedges - it was very nice indeed.

By the time we finished lunch it was getting on for two o'clock, so we decided to wander around Harrods pretending to be swanky buyers!! ;-) I did actually get a couple of books and some chocolates, while Ann and Trish treated themselves to a pastry!

Anyway, we eventually had to leave to get to the Royal Albert Hall - it was only a short walk down the road, so that was ok. We got there in plenty of time for a cup of tea and then we settled down for an evening of carols!

I had never been in the Royal Albert Hall before, so that was quite something. It was odd, it looks both bigger and smaller than it does on the television - quite bizarre! In any case, we all enjoyed the music and joined in where audience participation was called for!!!

The train journey home was just as uneventful as the one in the morning and I dropped Ann and Trish off at home before heading home myself, so now I have fed the cat and am off to bed!!