Life Lately: December was silly season Christmas drinks, parties and lots of fun! On Christmas Eve, Mr S and I popped to the The Goring Hotel for a glass of bubbles by the fire.
The hotel is just around the corner from us, it’s beautifully traditional and is perhaps most famous for being the hotel where Kate Middleton stayed the night before the Royal Wedding. We had a fantastic Christmas Day that united both our sides of the family at The Conrad St James for a festive lunch before heading back my flat for more fun and games. Boxing Day was a quieter, less boozy lunch at Mr Silver’s parents and since then we’ve been catching up with various relatives and friends before everything goes back to normal. I’m looking forward to New Year’s Eve celebrations tonight, do you have any exciting plans?
Back at the beginning of the month I went to check out The Nadler Victoria, a new luxury design hotel in my neighbourhood. The concept of the Nadler hotels is that the usual restaurant, bar, gym and other hotel amenities have been removed so that the price is more affordable. 
Each room has a mini-kitchen but the hotel also has deals with local restaurants and businesses so the guests can find affordable places to dine. The hotel was very chic and I’ll definitely recommend it to friends coming to visit us in Victoria.
Restaurants of the Month: I visited Roka, my favourite restaurant, twice. Once for brunch at Roka Aldwych and once for dinner at Roka Charlotte Street, of course both times the food and atmosphere lived up to expectations of this outstanding place.
I enjoyed a room with a view at Barbecoa, exquisite duck & champagne at HKK, outstanding steak and seafood at Hawksmoor and delicious sushi at Dozo with Lauren. Mr S and I were also super excited to have the new multi-functional destination restaurant, M Victoria Street open up nearby…
…they should be prepared to see a lot of us as we loved both the bar and restaurant.
I was also really happy to get have last festive lunch with Aftab before he went back to Bournemouth for the holidays. We loved our lunch at Balthazar but annoyingly the light was quite odd in the restaurant and the photos came out badly but I would highly recommend it if you fancy some classic French Bistro food. 
Travel: There were lots more posts on my time in St Lucia including a review of Sugar Beach, A Viceroy Resort, dinner at Ladera and a local lunch in Soufriere. 
I hope you enjoyed my round ups from 2015 which included my top travel moments, my top ten restaurants and my top ten hotels. I already have some exciting plans in place for next year but we’ll be kicking off with a weekend in Paris in the middle of January for our five year anniversary.
Blog Love: It can be easy to get disillusioned with the blogging world especially as there can be a distinct lack of honesty from some bloggers. That being said, I loved the posts from Kelly, Kat and Elle this month about being an honest blogger and having integrity. On a less serious note, I definitely had travel envy of Catherine’s trip to Poland, Emily’s two week trip to America and the boy’s from Hand Luggage Only trip to the Caribbean.
Happy New Year for tomorrow everyone, I can’t wait to see what surprises 2016 holds!
