London & Edinburgh
Christmastime in Europe was a dream. To spend each day bundled up against the frigid air, wandering through brightly decorated streets, sipping on mulled wine at Christmas markets, stumbling upon cozy pubs for a bite to eat before braving the cold temperatures yet again. My husband Sam and I got married in May 2023, and we wanted our first Christmas and New Year’s as a married couple to be extra special — just the two of us. What better way to do that than to book tickets to explore places we’d never been before?
We landed in London two days before Christmas, and the city was overwhelming in the best of ways — a massive metropolis teeming with people from all over the world and decorated to the nines with Christmas lights and ornaments adorning every street. I felt like a little kid in a Christmas movie, gazing up in awe at the beautiful decorations all over the place. The crowds were crazy at times, but I didn’t mind — it’s part of the joy of the Christmas season, innit? The hustle and bustle of busy shoppers excitedly going in and out of beautifully decorated stores with their Christmas treasures, tourists like us who had to stop and check their phones to make sure they’re headed the right direction, families wrangling their kids bundled up in the puffiest lil coats.
Our Christmas holiday was quiet but lovely. We spent hours on end meandering through the bustling city, before we ended Christmas Eve in my family’s traditions: eating lasagna for dinner and then heading off to midnight mass — which this time, was at none other than Westminster Abbey. It’s difficult for me to comprehend all the history that surrounds you in places like this, these ancient buildings that have stood the test of time, monuments to ages long since past. We walked through an empty London in the early hours of Christmas morning, reveling in the comforting silence, filled with joy.
After a magical Christmas in London, we headed up north to Scotland, where I completely fell in love with Edinburgh. I don’t know what I was expecting, I told Sam, but I am so surprised by how much I love this city. It felt like coming home, in a sense; even though I had never been to Scotland before, Edinburgh felt like a warm embrace of a loved one on a cold night who beckons you to come in and sit down by the fire to warm up. An inviting mixture of medieval and modern, Edinburgh is filled to the brim with quaint shops and pubs, forever guarded by the age-old castle that keeps watch over this charming city.
The days passed by in a blur, and I completely lost track of time (isn’t that just the absolute best part about vacations and that always odd time between Christmas and New Year’s?) With snow gently falling upon a sleepy Edinburgh, we flew back to London to celebrate New Year’s. I didn’t have any plans for us (I don’t know why I do this to myself), so we decided to head straight into the craze of Piccadilly Circus and see what we could find. Who would’ve thought we would have ended up at a cozy pub with live music, making friends with random strangers, dancing and ringing in 2024 with not a care in the world? It was better than anything I could’ve planned for us, and the absolute best way to cap our first winter holidays as a married couple.
