With Christmas 2018 spent in Copenhagen, Christmas 2019 saw us in Melbourne while Christmas 2020 saw us Home Alone in Sydney!
Since I wrote a travelblog about our wonderful Copenhagen Christmas adventures I wont repeat them here.
For Christmas 2019 Kev and I drove from Sydney to Melbourne, a journey of 880kms which we took two days to do with an overnight stay in Albury. Once in Melbourne we headed to Nics place where we were staying. Meanwhile Andrea flew from Armidale, staying with Kerrii, Seb, Grace and Rupert and with the two apartments about a ten minute walk from each other it was easy for us all to go from one to the other.
So on Christmas Eve we enjoyed a beautiful Roast Pork dinner cooked for us by Seb and held at their apartment while on Christmas Day we had another lovely meal at Nics place. Following us all eating more than an elegant sufficiency present opening was the order of the afternoon.
the Boxing Day test match between Australian and New Zealand which was great fun. With a packed lunch made up of Christmas leftovers, which included some of Nics famous Christmas cake amongst all the delicious food, we enjoyed some friendly rivalry with the many Kiwis who were all around us with an eventual win for Australia by 247 runs a few days later.
We enjoyed many of the delights which Melbourne had to offer after the Christmas celebrations; visits to the State Library of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria to name a few before we headed back to Sydney.
Christmas 2020 couldnt have been more different thanks to the nasty surprise which gave us when we first began to realise earlier in the year that it was going to throw all our well made plans into the air! For us those well made plans were that Katherine, Thomas, Sienna, Evie and Isabella from Copenhagen to join us for Christmas while Ross and Natsumi too from Kanagowa to join the rest of us living in Australia in Armidale, Melbourne and Sydney. Needles to say, family members who
were flying in from Denmark and Japan had their flights cancelled so we set about making other arrangements.
In the end, the only family member with plans to Sydney for Christmas was Nicola who booked herself, Kevin and I into Aqua Dining for lunch on Christmas Day; the restaurant situated over North Sydney Pool with views of beautiful Sydney Harbour and the Harbour Bridge. We were really looking forward to that even though we were going to miss the rest of the family. Then Sydneys Northern Beaches entered a crucial lockdown when Covid cases were detected there which saw all the States closing their borders to each other. Effectively this meant that, as one of Melbournes five million residents whod already spent fifteen (15) weeks in lockdown to curb an outbreak of Covid there, Nicola would have had to spend another two weeks in quarantine in a Melbourne hotel once shed flow back from Sydney before she could go home. Not willing to do that, a decision was made to cancel lunch at Aqua Dining resulting in Kev and I spending Christmas home alone!!
had three children from a previous marriage, weve never had Christmas on our own!! And since I like a cast of thousands around us for Christmas, I wasnt very happy about that. Well, thats an exaggeration of course; what I really meant was I like family members - which at this point in time are adult kids and grandkids - all together with us at Christmas. But of course lifes all about rolling with the punches!!
So on Christmas Eve I spent two hours (I kid you not) in a socially distanced queue - with most of us wearing masks - at our local Seafood shop to buy lobster and prawns for the home alone Christmas Day lunch. And even though we were on our lonesome the house looked very nice with the tree and all the decorations to cheer us up.
