Since my last post, we've had Christmas, of course - and a lovely day in Inverurie with Gary, Carole and Luca, plus Liz and Fergus and Guthrie. We had a super meal, but missed out on Carole's famous lime chocolate cheesecake, as Liz had a rather unfortunate accident, with the 3 dogs the grateful recipients. Here's Luca in full flow with Guthrie and Gary looking on:
Luca directed the present opening after dinner - and woe betide you if you weren't paying full attention, or were distracting the master of ceremonies.
Monday morning was the start of our long journey - not to mention it being Boxing Day and our 44th anniversary. Whereas Christmas Day was positively balmy - Aberdeen was the warmest place in the UK, just failing by fractions to beat the Xmas Day temperature record of 15.6 C - we awoke to a reasonable covering of snow the morning after. Cairn o' Mount was closed, of course, but our driver managed over the Slug Road OK and we thought it would be plain sailing after that, but, just north of Dundee, we hit a patch of ice and slalomed our way across the dual carriageway. Fortunately, we had an experienced driver who steered in to the skids and recovered the situation. My right hand might never recover, however, after the vice-like grip Jo exerted on it.
The rest of the journey went well and, despite a late departure from Glasgow due to de-icing the wings, we made our tight connection in Dubai and got to Adelaide nearly an hour earlier than scheduled on Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, we spent most of the day with Lucy, Cade and Braeden, as they had just 3 days of their holiday left before returning to USA. A traditional walk down the length of Semaphore pier first:
The plan was then to take the train in to the city and perhaps have something to eat at the Asian Food Court in Central Market, but our train was late and we were fast running out of time, so opted for Plan B, which was a walk up to Port Adelaide:
We were keen to see whether any visible progress had been made on the restoration of the City of Adelaide:
We walked back to Semaphore and had tea on the upstairs decking at Lickerish. Back in Derby St, I hit the wall at 8 pm and toddled off to bed.
Plans to head to Cleland Wildlife Park on Thursday had to be aborted - there had been overnight storms for the second night in a row and they had to close the park until further notice whilst they cleared up - so we reverted to a journey in to the city and to Central Market for lunch:
Cade and Lucy went for a short pedalo trip on the River Torrens afterwards:
Notice how brown the water is after the storms?
We got back to Derby St in good time for Chris' BBQ. Matt and Abby had come over for the occasion and the usual team photo was taken:
Miller has got two little figurines - an old man and an old lady - and he calls them Grannie Jo and Granda Ian:
By Friday morning - Lucy's last day - they had managed to clear most of the debris and open the Wildlife park again, so off we drove up the hills to Cleland, where we spent most of the morning in the low cloud, but the boys enjoyed viewing and feeding the animals, especially the kangaroos and wallabies.
Chris, Kelly and the boys arranged to meet us for a late lunch in the pretty little nearby German town of Hahndorf. None of what happened before at Cleland Wildlife Park seemed to stop Braeden from eating Kangaroo Fillet for lunch.
We had time for some silly tourist photos:
Nobody was all that hungry in the evening so we just took a short stroll along Semaphore esplanade and some had fish and chips before heading to bed to get a couple of hours' sleep before the early rise.
As I complete this post, Kelly's at the gym and Chris and Jo are just about to head off to the cinema to see Star Wars' latest, so I'll be holding the babies for a short while. I'll see if I can summon up the strength for a short cycle later on.
