Antipodal Adventures: Parental Edition #1

Right, it's time for the first instalment of the excitement of having my parents here. They arrived at the end of September, looking dazed, bleary-eyed and slightly shellshocked by the joys of long haul travel. "There was just so... much... orange juice". But they had had a nice stop off in Singapore for a couple of days to break up the journey. And, just to make them feel really at home from the start, it solidly rained all day on their arrival. Thanks, Sydney.

The first few days were spent recuperating from the jet lag and processing the whole 'being on the other side' of the world thing and also discovering the wonders of a couch with a chaise longue*.

* If you're short like me and my dad, you can stick your legs out ALL THE WAY and you still don't reach the end! Wheee! Needless to say, that became "Dad's spot" very quickly.

Then it was time to go out and explore.  We took them on a mini road trip down the coast to Botany Bay to show them where all the crims first washed up:

It turned out that the fleet arrived at Botany Bay on the recommendations of a previous ship that had stopped there. However, the first ship had arrived in the Australian winter and had marked it down as lush and liveable.  By the time the First Fleet got here,  it was summer and an arid wasteland again and they were like, "What the heck were those guys thinking? Eff this schizzle" and moved on up the coast to Sydney Harbour. 

But as we were visiting in early spring, we got the nice version too:

Full disclose: Jan hates this top I'm wearing with a passion. Well, ok, he strongly dislikes it. But I am NOT getting tan lines for my wedding dress, dammit, and I don't care how awful I look in the meantime, 

Then we took them along the Grand Pacific Drive to see the sea bridge and the beautiful coastline. In the face of such beauty, my dad remained the most impressed by how much taller Jan is than him:

So that was their first few days!  In the next edition: it's cake-for-breakfast day!