During the festive season, the Winter Wonderland is set up in Hyde Park (London). Tuesday night we went in for some goodies. The theme is based around a German Christmas Fair. There are rides (including an outdoor skating rink), food and drink stalls and craft/Christmas trinket vendors. We had some bratwurst, wheat beer and roasted chestnuts. It’s an amazing place as it’s completely fabricated for the event, none of these buildings are permanent. It is incredible that they construct this place for about 4-5 weeks! Some of these buildings are 2-3 storeys too!
Here’s one a video of me marvelling at the buildings, and here’s another
Here’s Kate eating roasted chestnuts for the first time, with commentary…!
and instant Bavarian town
and nothing was stirring, not even our GOOSE! Tomorrow’s dinner will be roast goose. We ordered it from our favourite “we hang meat outside” butcher. This morning was an early start to pick mr. goose up, we wanted to beat the rush or people picking up turkey’s and other Christmas meat treats, so we got our local commonwheels car and headed into Oxford at 6.45am. Not a lot of traffic at that hour… funny eh?
Photos of mr. goose to come!
UPDATE: I’ve been thinking of how to cook mr. goose. Kate has suggested I use my birthday present from this summer – a Weber kettle! I think it’s going to be BBQ goose for Christmas. Who says you can’t get your BBQ out for Christmas in the UK??
If you have ignored the Christmas stuff in supermarkets, I found the true sign of Christmas.
Meat hanging in the covered market!
This is a time of year I love. Things get lovely and festive, nice and cold and generally cheerful.
This year, we’ve decided on goose for Christmas lunch. We have to go pick it up on the morning of the 24th. Sometime after 6am. I’m told you have to get there early to avoid the rush. The butcher who we use is a lovely old fashioned butcher, and they are really popular. So we’ll put on our warmest clothes on Thursday morning to head to the butcher nice and early. Probably with a thermos!
I also wondered around Oxford looking for neat things to photograph, so here’s the whole album
Kate decided to do something different for her birthday this year, so she got a few of us together and we headed to a local outdoor adventure centre. Here were were put in a 3G swing (a swing that puts you up 10 meters in the air), jumped for a trapeze from the top of a pole 10 meters off the ground, abseiled down a flat wall and climbed a stack of crates.
From this photo, you can see the enjoyment someone is getting from putting her friends through all this!
You can also watch two videos one of the 3G swing (and Kate screaming) and one of her jumping off a pole
I know this because the butter is hard at “room temperature”. Hmm, time to turn on the central heating..
It is lovely though, I plan to visit the market this weekend for some festive spirit. Hohoho…!!
