Sunday, December 21, 2014

Watson Family Visit-Day 1

We were very excited to be welcoming visitors, family from back home to have with us for Christmas!  We picked Brian’s dad, step-mom and little brother up from the airport bright and early and took them straight to the beach!  We’ve done this coastal walk from Bronte to Bondi before and thought it was a great place to take them to stretch their legs, keep their bodies moving (the long flight is a killer and if you don’t keep moving, you will crash and be a zombie most of your trip), and show them some of the coastal beauty Sydney has to offer.

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Grandpa was great with the girls-helping to carry them and teach them about the things they were seeing along the way.

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Beautiful and famous Bondi Beach

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Some of the cool painting along our beach walk

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Our 2nd time at Speedos for brekkie-great food and amazing view!

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Even the people facing the back wall have the mirror to still enjoy the view!

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The beach was getting a bit busier when we were heading back

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Love all the outdoor pools here!

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It was nice having visitors taking pictures of things they think are unique as we have gotten so use to everything that we forget how different they are…like this bubbler.

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Once we were back to the cars, we drove north of Sydney to park the cars at Brian’s office to take the train back into the city (to avoid the crazy high parking prices!)

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First stop was Milson’s Point to go to Luna Park to see Santa again.

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Then back into the city to check out the Christmas decorations at the QVB

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We love the pedestrian scramble, a system that stops all vehicular traffic and allows pedestrians to cross an intersection in every direction, including diagonally, at the same time.

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As we approached the Queen Victoria Building, we caught a glimpse of the guy that passed out in the fountain!

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That’s rough!

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Funny thing about Uggs in Australia, you’re actually considered trashy if you wear them out in public…Aussies only wear them at home to keep warm!

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The lovely and ginormous Swarovski Christmas Tree that spans all 3 levels! It stands 24 metres (78’) tall, has 60,000 lights and is decorated with 144,000 Swarovski crystal ornaments.  The tree takes 40 hours to install and decorate by a team of 72 people, including engineers, technicians, lighting consultants and crystal makers.

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This was where we saw Santa last year.

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Checking out Hobby Co before leaving the QVB

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From the QVB, we headed down to Westfield to check out their LEGO Christmas tree. It stands 10m (33’) tall and was built from close to half a million LEGO bricks, making it the biggest LEGO Christmas Tree ever seen in the Southern Hemisphere.

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Then it was down the street to check out the David Jones window displays

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And then on the Hyde Park…this guy was amazing playing Christmas songs on the bottles! Alaina walking back from giving him a tip (money, not musical) Smile

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And the last stop before leaving the city was to pay our respects to the 2 victims from the hostage situation at the Lindt cafe in Martin Place.  It was pretty emotional and made it all the more real as we were there exactly one week after.

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Back to Stryker to pick up the cars and head home.

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I think we wore our visitors out on their first day!

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