Happy New Year

The Grange in Adelaide

I'm a bit late with this seasons greetings, but since I'm one of these travelling types now, I'm sure you can forgive me.

Happy New Year, everyone, and I hope you've all had wonderful Christmases, Hanukahs, Yules and whatever else you celebrate. It's been a busy month for me and as it always does, the time is flying. Christmas was a hot one here, and unfortunately, my uncle was working, so we had to wait for him to come home. We had a lovely day anyway, and we all spoilt each other with an excessive amount of gifts and plenty of food and love. We're still working through our Christmas stash. Slowly.

In the short period between Christmas and New Year, I managed to fit quite a lot in. My auntie and I took a trip into the city to catch the third day of the boxing day test match, and thoroughly enjoyed the cricket. I'm an Aussie supporter, as my love for cricket was only discovered four years ago in Cairns; to me, it seems natural to support the team that caught my interest.

It was another very hot day, but the atmosphere was fantastic and even though we were sticky and sweltering, we had a really great time. ALL the boys put on a great show.

 

 

After the cricket, I hopped on a plane to Adelaide to visit my lovely friend Jacquie, who before now, I haven't seen since we were both in year nine together. I spent New Years with her and her boyfriend, family and friends, and we spent the night on the Grange Beach, somewhere between a dozen sets of fireworks and the ocean. It was a beautiful warm evening, and we swam until it got dark, ate cheese and crackers, home made chicken burgers and hand picked cherries.

 

The New Year gang, minus me

As the sun went down, I grabbed my camera to get this shot.

 

The night was perfect, since I'd been worried about how I'd celebrate New Years. I'm not much of a party girl, but I don't like to sit around and ignore it. As it happens, Jacquie recently stopped drinking, so it turned out we were the perfect match!

 

While I was in Adelaide, Jacquie unfortunately had to work a fair bit, but we made up for it by spending plenty of time on the beach, eating great food and watching lots of Disney movies. Throw in a couple of hysterical games of Trivial Pursuit and you've got the perfect recipe for a great Radelaide holiday.

 

I'm back in Melbourne now, and although the weather was a bit miserable when I first got back, it's certainly heating up now and it looks like we're in for a great summer. In the last two days, we've been to Melbourne Zoo, which was awesome, and St Kilda beach for a few hours. Let's keep the review short; you'll get bored of my zoo stories otherwise.

 

I was so excited at both Adelaide and Melbourne zoos to see that they had Gila Monsters.

 

 

These are one of only two venomous lizards in the world, and also one of the first dangerous animals I ever learnt about. I've never seen one in the wild, so to see four, two at each zoo, in the space of a week was mind blowing. I love these things.

 

Melbourne Zoo also had the most gorgeous baby Asian elephant running about in the sun, three big male lions scrapping over lunch, and a lovely brown bear, to name but a few of the sights. Adelaide Zoo only topped this with their two Giant Pandas, who were magnificent, but I felt a little sorry for them (and the rest of the animals), because they never get a moment's peace!

 

Yesterday, we topped off the week with a stroll down St Kilda beach. Here in Melbourne, it's considered to be a less than perfect beach; my cousin warned us to watch out for needles in the sand, but when we got there, I thought it was lovely. It's a city beach, so yes, it is surrounded by roads, cars and industrial areas, but the water was lovely and clear, and the beach was packed, so it can't be that bad!

 

As beaches go, I rate this one pretty highly.

My auntie bought me lunch, and we sunbathed for a bit, got a little burnt, and paddled along a sand bank. It was a lovely way to spend a sunny day. Today is a bit hotter, and we're planning to spend most of it just relaxing, but we've got quite a bit planned for the next month.

I've booked my trip to Sydney for the beginning of February, my auntie and I are planning an overnight trip to Brisbane (to visit another zoo), and my friend Courtney and I are talking about heading to the Gold Coast for a few days.

Anyway, that's my adventures to date, and as always, I'll keep you updated as often as I can.

Thanks for reading, guys,

Stay cool!

Em