Christmas Cheer!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years!

Richard and I went down to Brayton (small village near York ... and for those of you who don't know York, it's more or less a four hour drive North of London) to spend Christmas with his parents. We left on the 24th of December and came back on the 3rd of January, thus having a full week to relax! And relax we did!

Lighting the Christmas candle before our starter.

Spent a lovely few days with his parents, mostly chatting and eating delicious food. And of course exchanging presents on Christmas day! On boxing day (they have boxing day here!) Richard's parents surprised us with tickets to see a traditional English pantomime (they managed to keep us guessing until we actually arrived to the theater which was really cool; we thought we were going to dinner!). So, what's a pantomime you ask? (I'm assuming your asking because I had no idea). Well, it's a play, shown in a theater, in which you participate! They take traditional stories such as Cinderella (that's the one we saw), Jack in the Bean Stock, etc. and give them a different twist (the ending of course, still being the same). The audience participates in different ways. For instance, every time the character 'Buttons' came on stage, everybody would shout out 'Heya Buttons!'. They would ask audience questions like: 'Should Cinderella go to the ball?' and everybody would shout 'yes!'. And at the end, they separated the audience in two sections to see which side could belt out 'Old McDonald' the loudest. It was so much fun!! What I enjoyed the most was the sing-along, shouting out things and seeing loads of kids having a great time (and dressed in fairy costumes, so cute!).

Other than that we spent most of our time, cooking, eating and to balance it all out, going to the gym where they have the most modern equipment and most luxurious pool + sauna I have ever seen.

Flowers I received from Richard's parents for my bday.

Oh and my birthday! Well first of all I opened my presents, which were all lovely! Then Richard and I headed into York to walk around and shop. We ate a Cornish pasty, where I had eaten before when touring with Catherine (Hi Catherine!), and then had dinner at a really nice Thai restaurant! I had such a good day and felt very spoiled!

A picture of York. 

Last but not least, we also spent a few nights out. Two of the nights we went out with some of Richard's hometown friends which was really nice! On one night, we went on 'The Ol' Brayton Pub Crawl' (it's not old, we made it up, but I thought it would sound cooler that way)...consisting of visiting every single pub in Brayton (there are 2)... in one night (they are 1 minute apart ... and incidentally a 2 minute walk from Richard's house). It was an ambitious feet but we did it, still bravely standing at the end (after 3 pints).

Twas fun :)

The first pub. 

Ironically, the only street between the only two pubs.

The second pub. 

Us enjoying the pub crawl.