Christmas day

Christmas Day was a very busy day.

Philip had stayed at our house overnight because he was flying out to Switzerland in the afternoon. He needed to get to the international terminal at about the same time as we (Suzy, Steph and I) needed to get to the domestic terminal.

That meant that there were four of us at home at breakfast time.

Nicky rang soon after we started opening our presents at 8am and we took turns to talk to her. It was 10pm on Christmas Eve in Switzerland. She and John had already been in Switzerland for a few days.

They had organized a Christmas present for us. It had arrived a few days before Christmas and was still sitting in a large box under the Christmas tree. When Suzy realized it was Nicky on the phone, she dashed out to the kitchen to grad a knife and started tearing the box open so we could find out they’d sent and so we could thank them for the present. It turned out to be an espresso coffee maker.

We made it just in time for the start of the Christmas church service at 9am. Suzy had arranged with Lucy that both families would sit upstairs. We needed not have worried about seating because the church wasn’t crowded and we were the only people upstairs.

Lucy and Geoff had invited us all to their house for lunch and had agreed to have an early lunch so we could get to the airport on time. We arrived at their place at 11am, exchanged presents and started lunch at 12 noon. It was a fabulous lunch – lots of food including a juice turkey that they cooked on their barbecue.

The timing worked out well because we’d finished the Christmas pudding by the time we left at 1:30pm.

Fortunately, the taxi arrived at our place 5 minutes early (at 2:10pm) because Philip had realized he had forgotten his passport and so we needed to go via his house to pick up the passport on the way to the airport. He found it in no time at all and we reached the airport at about 3pm. Plenty of time.

The Virgin flight was on time. The taxi driver who took us to our hotel was a surprise – he spoke English and he knew where he was going.

The Saville Suites is almost next door to the tennis complex and the MCG is less than 5 minutes walk from the hotel.

We weren’t feeling hungry after the big lunch but we decided to walk to Southgate for dinner. It was only about 10 or 15 minutes away across the Federation Footbridge. The footbridge is an impressive structure that must be able to carry a lot of people heading for the tennis centre or the MCG.

Although most restaurants were closed, we found a nice Italian restaurant at ground level overlooking the river. By that time, we were feeling more hungry.

The riverside atmosphere was very pleasant. There were plenty of people strolling past enjoying the evening. It was a surprise to us that the sun didn’t set until about 8:30pm.

On the way back to the hotel, Suzy spotted Grant Hackett walking right past us in the opposite direction.