New Year, New City

Every seen I started my journey with Southampton in the Malaysian campus, my New Years have been colorful. Over the last 3 years, I’ve celebrated New Years in different cities, this year being no different. The first year at University of Southampton Malaysia Campus (USMC), myself and a rather significant number of my course-mates decided to cross the ‘river’ and celebrate our New Years in Singapore.

This year, to continue my streak of being in a different city, I decided to welcome 2017 in the capital city of London. This included a compulsory visit to Oxford street’s Christmas lights and the infamous Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park.

The lights on Oxford street, the famous shopping street of London normally have the lights set up long before Christmas. So even if you don’t plan on shopping, it’s a pleasant walk just to admire the lights at night. But fair warning, this time of the year it gets really crowded! I walked from Marble Arch station end to the Oxford Circus station end just looking at the lights.

Winter Wonderland, as its name suggest is an annual event held during winter and normally goes on from early November up to till the new year. The event has something for everyone of all ages, whether with friends or with family. There’s food, rides, live music, carnival games and even a circus! The stalls look like the stalls at the Christmas market in Southampton, giving a Christmas-y feel to the place. I had a pleasant time just walking around the area with a packet of Churros drizzled with chocolate sauce. The rides were rather expensive, so I only went on one.

To end the New Years eve celebration, i headed down to the London Eye area. Every year, tickets to the firworks show are sold online, unfortunately for me, the tickets were sold out when i tried to buy them 🙁 But that didnt stop me from trying to sneak a peek! So I went to the closest open bridge i could fine, Blackfriars bridge ( I was told that the view from Lambeth bridge was better). The view was decent but was not helped by the fact that the wind blew the smoke our way, so half the show was blurry. I had some friends who had tickets to the show and they had fantastic view/angle of the fireworks. Hoping that 2017 will be a better year for everyone 🙂