I love Christmas! There is only one thing I love as much as Christmas and that's being able to have mangos at Christmas, and surprising people, and seeing my family. Basically I get over excited at Christmas.
And what could be more exciting than pretending that you're not coming at Christmas and surprising your nieces and nephew? Nothing, that's what. So that's what we did. On Christmas Day, after cooking our traditional turkey and having Christmas dinner with Judy and Gus, we headed to the airport and got on a plane. We flew with Singapore Airlines this time, basically because Etihad burned us. We had about 100000 frequent flyer miles wih them, which should have been enough to get us to Abu Dhabi and back but with the taxes it was almost my pointless and would have cost us the same as just buying the fares outright and saving the miles so we decided to use the miles to buy things from their rewards shop. We bought a knife set, a watch, 2 pairs of sunglasses and then donated the rest of our points. The knife block arrived really quick but the watch and sunglasses didn't arrive for months, their customer service were not help at all and kept telling us that the items had been sent for about 2 months, finally they worked out that they had sent them to the wrong address. So someone else in teddington had a good year. This was after it took them 2 months to credit our points after the last flights. So we at done with Etihad and had turned our attentions to singapore airlines.
I some how thought that travelling on Christmas Day it would be quieter but no, still busy on the plane with little touches of Christmas. Our first leg from singapore was on a 777 with a 3 3 3 configuration so we sat in the middle so we could get up and wander around. I don't eat on planes but the food didn't look too bad and there was a special turkey dinner on for the Christmas Day flight. I am a devotee of singapore airport I have to say. Lots of places to rest, great shower facilities, little gardens, a pool, massage chairs. Next time we fly through there we definately want to stop over. They had Christmas trees up and they smelled amazing, just like a tree is supposed to. I love Christmas tree scent.
Our second leg was on the a380 and we had snagged ourselves a couple of seats upstairs which is nice, you get a little luggage bin next to your seat which is handy and it's a 2 4 2 configuration so Russ and I can sit off to the side on our own.
I always keep an eye out for the moment that we cross into Australia and this was it! Everyone else on the plane was asleep and I kept sneaking little peeks through the blind. When we finally landed in melbourne I just wanted to get far far away from the plane. Going through customs was a bit of a ball ache because it was so busy. I had not remembered that Russ could come rough the Aussie queue with me rather than me going through the others queue with him so we wasted a lot of time lining up. Will definately remember next time. When we finally arrived we grabbed something to eat quickly and then headed for the nearest cab to see the kids. We'd told Jenny we were coming so she'd keep them at home so we could surprise them and we made a bee line for Sunbury, parking at the end of the street to avoid detection, we snuck up to their front door. We heard Jenny calling out to the kids that we were here but they thought that she meant we were on Skype, they were definately surprised to see us. Jack sadly had been clued in by his granddad accidentally but the girls didn't know, Liv had a feeling that something was going to happen but didn't know what. We spent the day hanging out and then Jack came back to chapel street with us to shower and change before meeting the girls and jenny in the city. Anniene met us as well and we all had dinner at schnitz in Elizabeth street. Jet lag started to hit and we caught the tram home with Jack, both Russ and I periodically nodding off making it look like this sweet boy had junky parents. We stopped into Safeway in delirium and let him buy stupid amounts of sugar.
This was my first mango, it is posed artfully next to the team mug that I got from my team for Christmas. That mug goes places.
This was the impossibly blue morning sky.
This was the block arcade dressed up for Christmas.
As luck would have it we arrived smack bang on the day that vline decided to close the bendigo line to trains and replace them with buses. There were no buses that would take you to Sunbury and bendigo, it was either go to bendigo on the express bus or go to Sunbury and take the long way to bendigo. So we went on an all stopping adventure and dropped Jack in Sunbury on our way to see Dad and his new kitty Harry.
Wasn't too bad though, we listened to music and just relaxed, there are worse ways to spend your time.
He's a bit cute is Harry, mad as a hatter but cute. I miss Dad when I'm away for so long so we can't go more than a year without coming home now.
Yvette and Anthony had finished their gorgeous house in Bullarto and we went to spend some time with them and Miki, cooking and watching the kangaroos. The stars are just amazing. We could spend the whole evening looking at the stars and not get bored.
Somewhere in there are kangaroos and wallabies.
This is the vintage train that travels between daylesford and bullarto at weekends. We didn't go on it but saw it stopped at daylesford station where the Sunday market is held.
We had a little drive through the Forrest to the garden of st erth and stopped there for a little snack in the cafe.
Then it was back to bendigo in the midst of a heat wave. It was above forty for about 4 or 5 days straight. We gave up sleeping in the bedroom as it never dropped below 30 in there and made up camp on the fold out couch in the lounge where the air conditioning was. We got up early one morning to take advantage of the bendigo pool. It's brilliant, good clean facilities for showering and changing, lockers and a beautiful clean outdoor pool. It was so refreshing in the heat but I did end up getting a tiny bit of sunstroke. We wandered into town after our swim, deciding that we didn't want to wait for the bus in the heat and walked along the pavement, it feeling slightly softer under our feet than normal. Each time we ran out of shade we would run to the next bit of shade as quick as we could to avoid the sun beating down on us. It was bloody hot. We eventually stole into shops for their air con.
Once we headed back to melbourne we spent more time with the kids, this was Katie making the most of the dog beds at a pet shop in melbourne central. Olivia was trying to convince me to move back and by a cat, she's pretty compelling.
All good things must come to an end and our last night was coincidentally my birthday.
We spent the day swimming in the sea baths in st kilda which had been closed for most of our visit because of a failed filter or something. We did end up taking the kids to MSAC though which was fun, they had their own slide and wave pool and heated pools, you can't beat that.
Our last dinner was at a little tapas restaurant at the end of fitzroy street, we had tapas and cocktails with John and Tam and talked about all their wedding plans. It was sad that we would be missing out on the actual day. If I had more money and annual leave we could have made it. But in eh end we got up at 2 am and got dressed up and watched over Skype.
We love our Oz trips, now that Russ is more familiar with it he has things at he likes and we have things that we like to do together there now like swim in the sea baths and take the kids to schnitz.
We're already planning the next one but who knows when that will be! We do, but we're not telling. The above photo is a little bit of the brushfire haze that drifted over South Australia from all the bush fires that hit during the heat wave.
This is what greeted us when we came home, ah teddington, you really know how to let a girl down.
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