Long absence

Forgive my long absence, it must be life that has caught up with me. I have to start from the more recent event and work myself back in time.

Our younger daughter arrived a little over a month ago to look for work and settle down here in Australia. Her boyfriend arrived two weeks ago. He only has a tourist visa so he can't work to begin with, but his paperwork for residency is being processed, and we are hoping that it will be quick. So they are doing all the stuff you have to do when you settle in a new country.

For example,  she is trying to pass  her driving test. She has lived in Chile and they do not have an agreement with Australia simply to change over driver's licences. She has had to do it all from scratch, which is a bit silly when you have been driving for over 10 years. Had she still had her French license, it would have been simple, like it was for me, but it had been stolen when her handbag was stolen.

This is the first part of the"Renaissance Meal". It had to be oysters of course.

Hubby turned 65 and we had the kids and some friends over. Our son cooked us a "Renaissance Meal" for hubby's birthday. It wasn't what I feared from the beginning. I was imagining a big swan in the middle of the table, or a wild boar or something, but in fact it was quail wrapped in bacon and with a blue cheese sauce. It was presented with very fresh carrots and a puree of turnips and pears. Delicious!

Hubby has already spent  months collecting his pay slips and other paperwork from the different countries that he has lived in, trying to figure out what his pension will amount to. It is very difficult. Luckily he is not retiring yet so he still has some time to work on it.
 
Hubby also got to take over the downstairs dining area and run the model railway that he bought from an elderly gentleman. They were downsizing in preparation of moving into a unit for elderly. We should really be doing the same thing but sadly we are not, rather the opposite. However, I blame the children. Our garage is a beautiful mix of their different things. Maybe there are readers out there who have the same problem?

You can look through the things and remember different periods in the children's lives. One thing I regret is not having kept a diary when the children grew up. To remember all the funny episodes and things they said. Now I mix them all up and can't remember who said what, if I remember it at all. It's tragic! Young parents today are lso ucky with Fb, Instagram, Twitter  etc where they seem to record every move they and their offspring make and every morsel they eat. I am not being facetious here. I would use Instagram and Twitter too if I only knew how. I have enough with managing my Fb account and not always very successfully

This was by far hubby's favorite
present, a Panama hat that actually
fits, unlike the pose!

We have had very hot weather lately and it has also been very humid, but right now I am sitting here listening to thunder rolling in the distance. I hope we get a good soak, we really need it.

Easter has come, ... and gone in fact. We just all of a sudden realized that had some days free. Well, nothing happened, in the sense we didn't go away, we have just been here doing fun things around the house.

Have to leave you now and make lunch. Take care, until next time! 

On the road again

In fact, not anymore, we got back late last night from our 3,500 km trip in time to see the beautiful fireworks in Sydney on TV for the New Year 2016. As usual it was gorgeous and very festive. There were some very scary booms around here too but we never saw any real fireworks.

Anyway, we left Sydney on the 25th after having had a nice meal with our son the day before. Of course it finished in the pool.

Yes, they are wearing cossies (Aussie for swimming trunks)

We had wanted to get back to the area in the north of NSW where they have hot springs, and where we had been once before.  This time we went to a place called Moree. A little snippet of information about Moree is that 1700 trucks pass through the town every day with  produce or cattle or whatever else.

The town was really concentrated around the hot bore. Our hotel didn't have a hot pool but some  hotels did, I think. We had to go to the bath house and get a day ticket. They have pools there ranging from 37+C to 40+C and it is heavenly to lower yourself into the water. There was also a normal pool where you could do laps and go down a big water slide.
Needless to say hubby had a few goes there but every time when I was preparing,  to take a photo when he came out, he came out like a cannonball. Impossible to try to catch that with a normal telephone camera.

It might look like a smile but is actually a grimace of pain. The water came out of the nozzle really hard and very hot and it was all I could do to stay under it for the photo. It was supposed to be good for injuries!?

Our next motel booking was in Nambour where we stayed for three nights. The main purpose was to be near the Glasshouse Mountains. There are lots of great walks to do there, and small arty-farty towns, like Maleny and Montville for example, with nice restaurants and shops and art galleries.....and there is also the Big Pineapple! A little word of warning though! Everything closes very early. Art galleries at four o'clock in the afternoon and shops at five maybe.

The pineapples were out of season so
there was nothing pineapple oriented
to eat or drink which was a shame.
Hubby had so looked forward to a
nice pineapple fritter.

The Glasshouse Mountains, so named by Captain Cook because of their resemblance to kilns for firing glass.

There is lots more to show and tell but my sister in law arrived yesterday so now I have a full week of doing fun things with her. We started off doing the Art Trail in Bundeena right after we picked her up at the airport. Some of the artists are absolutely great.

I love these flowering gums, we saw loads of them in Queensland but we don't see so many of them around here.

Leaving you now with lots of good wishes for 2016.  I won't bother about about resolutions this time. It seems to have an opposite effect for me somehow, I don't know about you.

Update from Down Under

Time for a little update from us Down Under. It's Monday morning and a little bit grey as opposed to the weekend which was gorgeous.

Hubby was designated Santa at his company's Christmas party. He was very well disguised with fake white hair (not that he needed that!), and long white beard, and a moustache. The only thing  that made him into an Aussie Santa was that he wore flip-flops rather than big snow boots. And don't you know it, that that is what gave him away!

Later on when he was back in normal clothes and some people were leaving, this little five-,year old Chinese girl came up and said, very politely, to hubby "Bye, Santa, thank you!". When we asked her, why she thought hubby was Santa, she said she could tell by his feet.

We have also been away on a four-day week end with hubby's friends from university, since last I wrote here. We go somewhere different every year. It is important that it includes wine-tasting, cheese and chocolate tasting, and that there are some interesting things to visit. I think I have commented on this before, but when I say "interesting things to visit", it can be a gorgeous beach or a local art gallery or an old gold-mining town or why not a very, very small church.

It is hard to deny that beaches like this are gorgeous!

Like a Mini, it is bigger inside
than it looks.

It is a different type of sight-seeing from Europe where there is so much history. Everywhere you go in Europe there are churches and museums and castles dating way back in time. Here it goes back to the first settlers maybe and the mining period. Some of the little towns have been very nicely restored though and it is very nice to stroll leisurely through them, maybe buying some cute candles or jewelery or other knick knacks.

Our younger daughter, who presently lives in Chile, has decided to come to Australia, and look for work. We are very much looking forward to that. Her boyfriend will come later when his visa has come through.

Jacarandas are in bloom at the moment, and not always alone.

Time to go and do chores. Lots of good thoughts coming your way now!!!!

Choo-choo

One good thing about being married to a train afficionado (I almost wrote train freak), is that you get to go to places you might never have thought of going to otherwise.

When hubby told me he had a little trip planned by train to Brisbane Water I was mildly surprised. You see, Brisbane is in Queensland, 8 to 9 hours drive or more from here.  I would have preferred to fly there, but since I hadn't been there before I thought "What the heck, it will be fun even if it is by steam train and just for the day." It will be like these rich people in Europe who go from London to Paris just for lunch or fly to Rome for a romantic dinner. But guess what? Brisbane Waters is just north of Sydney, near Woy Woy!  We went anyway.

Most people got off in Woy Woy to go for a little lunch cruise, but we stayed on until Gosford where hubby had a whale of a time checking out the shunting movements, the turning of the steam engine, and the numerous super freighters that came through the station. Thank goodness I brought a book.

Of course, this was before I was told about the new health scare, i.e. "Sitting is the new smoking."
Hubby had a health meeting at work where they were cautioned against sitting still for too long. Many people order stand up tables. I know, tables always stand up, but these can be pulled up to become high so people have to stand up and work at them.   So my favorite activities will have to be limited, sitting in a comfortable chair reading, or watching TV, or surfing the net in an office chair, or painting which I prefer doing sitting down as well. Fortunately lying down is ok so that will have to do then I guess.

I had lunch this week with the ladies in my painting group. We went to a place called Camellia Gardens Teahouse and it was lovely. I wish I had known about it before. I could have taken so many visitors there, I know they would have loved it. For you who are still to come this will be a little treat, I promise you.

 

So until next time here is a little quite from Aesop :" No act of kindness, no matter how small,  is ever wasted".

Men chase dog

When we got back from the city a couple of weeks ago we saw a very funny sight. It was two big, beefy men running after a small bundle of fluff, that turned out to be a dog, one of those cute little things that people take to special hair dressers for dogs. The dog was very happy to be off the leash and was running very fast on its little legs downhill towards the nearest forest. The big burly men, despite the many hours probably spent in a gym judging by their looks, had a hard time keeping up. Behind them were two gorgeous looking girls wearing very high heels trying in vain to join the chase. One was probably the owner of the dog since she was holding out a rhinestone-studded leash, which matched her own belt. I hope the story didn't end with "Man bites dog"!

You may have noticed that I have been off the radar for longer than I planned. The thing is when you write about little things happening in your priviliged life it just seems a bit frivolous compared to what has been happening in the world lately. I am thinking about the Syrian situation in particular. I dearly hope there will be an end to it soon.

Anyway, the last part of my stay in the cottage after the last visitors left was a bit long. Luckily, our old friends from up north took pity on me and came for a visit. We also had a quick trip to Oslo to pick up elder daughter and see a great exhibition with the artist Munch.

Lunch at Havets Hus in
Lysekil

First time I have paid with
my Visa card to go to the
toilet.

Elder daughter in front of
the Opera House in Oslo

However, the second week of September I went to meet hubby in Prague. He was there for a conference after having spent ten days in Spain. We both loved Prague and the hotel was conveniently situated right near the castle.

We rented a car for two days to get a chance to see the country side as well. A place I am not in a hurry to go back to is Kunta Hora or rather the Sedlec Ossuary. It was a chapel decorated with bones and sculls of 40.000 to 70.000 people. After 1511 a half-blind monk was charged with organizing these bones in a decorative way and when he was finished he got his sight back??!! If you crave more information about it, check out Wikipedia.

The Sydney weather has been pleasant but not too hot since I got back here. Except one day when it was +38°C and very windy. It felt like my eyeballs dried up and I couldn't close my eyes.

Last week end we went to the Manly Jazz festival which is on every year but we always miss it. It was great, with music being played everywhere, in the street, in pubs in churches, and on the beach.

Last Monday was a public holiday (Labour Day) I think. We had a bunch of people over for the first barbecue for the summer, and had a great time. But WHEN will I learn that when you prepare food for 12 people it doesn't mean that you have to prepare for 25 just in case?

Discombobulated

Well, right now I am not discombobulated, but I was, a little while ago, when I had to run out and bring in the laundry again that I had just hung out. It looked like the sun was coming out so I wanted to hurry up and get some stuff dry since it has been raining for days. Just minutes after it was all hung up the rain started again and I had to get the stuff inside again since it looks we are in for another day of rain.

My visitors have left and it always feels a bit weird the first day on your own. The idea was that my mother was going to come out again for a week or two but due to her fall we have had to put it off. She fell about a week ago, in the night with no one around, and broke several ribs and her collar bone and she is still very bruised. Other than that (!) she is in good health. We had a little visit with her together with my friend from the UK yesterday before she went back home to Surrey.

My first visitor was a friend whom we first met in Grenoble when we lived there.  Her husband is Australian and like us they have moved back there even though she was born in the Phillippines and grew up in America. She very kindly painted two front doors and she was so careful with the prep work I think even hubby will approve. I know he wouldn't if I had done it.

I almost feel embarrassed because my UK visitor also did a big garden job while she was here. I hope future visitors don't feel hesitant about coming, feeling like they are coming to some sort of labour camp.  You really don't have to do anything when you come here (well, ok then, maybe we just need the lawn mowed again or the little bridge over the little creek mended again) No, really, I am just kidding about that. You can just sit in a deck chair and read, or go for a nice walk in the forest, maybe picking mushrooms or berries.

Or maybe visit Pilarne, which is a sculpture park, on the island of Tjörn. Part of it is built on an old site from the Neolithic period.

Very narrow house built by Erwin Wurm from Austria

Here is what I saw when I looked out of the window last night while I was pulling down the blinds.

Vacuum cleaners

Yes, hubby went back to Australia last week, and left us with sixteen vacuum cleaners. No-one likes them around here in this family, except him, and besides now it is only me and youngest daughter left in the cottage. I guess they will have to be thrown away. Shame really, but he couldn't take them to Australia.

These little goodies are literally
called vacuum cleaners in Swedish.
 Must refer to the way you scarf
them down, much like a vacuum cleaner.

Last night we had a power cut and a little panic moment before we realized it was general and not something we had to deal with, like trying to change a fuse or something. We quickly found candles and made it quite cozy. Then we played a board game, and just as we had decided to go to bed the TV came on and scared the life out of us. You get a little bit jittery alone in a cottage sometimes.

Not much happening here otherwise, we had a farewell lunch at a very cute place called Solliden in Stenungsund. I highly recommend it. They have a wonderful lunch buffet and the setting is very nice. I think you can also get a room there.

I didn't bring the selfie stick.

Must go now and see if it is dry enough to mow the lawn. Next thing to look forward to is two girl friends coming to visit, in two separate goes, so more about that later. Cheerio!