Happy New Year from Us in the UK

Welcome to my 100th post! 

A special Thank You to my loyal readers who have read every single one of these posts. That's a lot of reading! It has been fun writing and sharing our adventures with you all.  Only a few more months until the blog comes to a closing, so soak it up...I know I am! And sorry about the backlog of posts, I have had a few "in waiting" so I could get caught up.

After driving back from Belgium on the 31st, we stopped into our hotel to nap and get ready for the night time festivities.  We drove to an Underground station we usually park, and rode into the city centre of London.  We bought tickets to watch the fireworks go off the London Eye (ferris wheel) at midnight to bring in the new year.  This was the first year the Mayor of London decided to do tickets to watch the fireworks. Even though there was crowd control...it was so packed!

We got in line around 6:40, and they began letting people in the embankment area (on the River Thames).  We posted up by at tree....and stood for the next 5 hours.  Not so fun when it was so windy and cold.  Jeff said this event had his four most hatred things: crowds, cold, being around drunk people & not drinking, and waiting. Needless to say, it wasn't the most enjoyable experience...and I definitely wouldn't recommend it to someone next year.

 Our view

 Our loyal tree

Massive amounts of people near the large speakers

Either way, we were able to experience a once in a lifetime event and we were glad we did it.  Well at least one of us...There wasn't any live entertainment, but they had music playing on these large speakers.  A DJ came on the speakers around 9 to get everyone pumped up.  The crowd was very diverse as I heard many different languages being spoken.  Not too many kids, and a variety of moods (some hating every moment and others dancing around like fools).

Obviously, the fireworks went off at midnight.  It was a pretty impressive amount of fireworks that lasted about 10 minutes.  We were able to get a few good shots and video.  The minute the fireworks were done, Queen (Not THE Queen, but the band) came on the speakers live and played as the massive amounts of people headed to the few amount of exits.  100,000 people...enough said.  It took us about an hour and a half to get to our car.  Free public transportation, so everyone was using it.  We had to walk quite a while before finding an Underground station that didn't have loads of people.  We hopped in our car, headed back to our hotel, and were asleep by 3 AM.

 Leading up to the New Year, the London Eye would change colors

 You could see the London Eye perfectly in the beginning. Once the fireworks were in full swing, there was so much smoke it became hard to see.

 

London Eye is fading away with the amount of smoke in the air

Turn your head to the side to see the video the correct way. But hey, it's fireworks...they don't need to be viewed in a certain way!

It was pretty funny to think that by the time we were getting ready to go to bed, our friends and family in the states had not even experienced the New Year.  (Differences: 5 hr= Indiana; 6 hr=Illinois; 8 hr=California).  Our New Year is already off to a great start, as I hope yours is as well. Look out for our 2014 Wrap Up Post in the coming days.

 Not the clearest picture, but this was taken after all the fireworks

 London was really beautiful that night, as the buildings are not always this lit up. If you look closely, Jeff's favorite building, The Shard, had 2015 lit up vertically on the side of it.

On to the next adventure...