Had a wonderful time yesterday with great friends. Woke up
to a great breakfast and then walked about 1 mile over to morning services at
Neal & Sandy’s church.
Erin needed
to stop for a “traditional” Christmas Donut at the closest 7-11, they are even
more prevalent here than in the States.
Most major intersections have, as our “tour
guide” said, a place where you can get your public transportation needs taken
care of. Turns out that Neal and Sandy attend a church that has a nationwide mission, connected
to a number of cities around Australia via video. The one here in Melbourne, is
in a 100 year old theater. The service was awesome in that it connected via
live feed to the main campus in Sydney. Great music and a wonderful message but
what was truly incredible was the stage, lighting and sound system.
Erin said that she had never been to a “Rock
Concert Church Service Before” . But what really blew me away, was not just with this church's building, but the
architecture of all of the “old” buildings here in Melbourne. Love seeing all
the old stone work and ornate metal. Not "old" like most of Europe, but there are
many earlier 20th century structures that are extremely well
preserved and in daily use.
An interesting side note, most of the sidewalks are
made of large blue stones. When I asked our “tour guide Sandy”, she explained
that they were re-purposed ballast stones from the days when most everything
that arrived by sailing ship to Australia came in at Melbourne due to the calm
waters offshore. All of the streets used to be paved with them, but with modern
materials now available, they are now each individually numbered and used for
sidewalk pavers. We strolled back through town past the 1990 World’s Fair building,
the Melbourne Museum and the Parliament building, through some parks large and
small, and made our way back to their apartment in Carlton.
Sandy again
prepared a wonderful lunch and we opened presents.
Sandy purchased Kangaroo coin purses for Jenn and I, and a Koala bear purse for Erin.
Jenn gave each family member one of the paracord bracelets she makes for each of our trips, and then….deh….deh…dah, it happened. Knowing that we had limited packing space to bring our friends gifts, we had been practicing a duet of “Baby Its Cold Outside” to regale them with our singing talent J, as our present to Neal & family. We did our best and everyone seemed to enjoy it so I guess the gift was a success. Of course, it could have been the many drinks that most had prior to our performance. Unfortunately Neal videoed it so it will live on in infamy and I am sure it will make it into Jenn’s photos to the left if you are really compelled to see it. We just “chilled” for the rest of the day, watched some movies, talked and told stories and had a thoroughly enjoyable day. So today we are going to the beach and going to explore the seaside part of town with pics to follow in my next posting. G’day Mates.
Sandy purchased Kangaroo coin purses for Jenn and I, and a Koala bear purse for Erin.
Jenn gave each family member one of the paracord bracelets she makes for each of our trips, and then….deh….deh…dah, it happened. Knowing that we had limited packing space to bring our friends gifts, we had been practicing a duet of “Baby Its Cold Outside” to regale them with our singing talent J, as our present to Neal & family. We did our best and everyone seemed to enjoy it so I guess the gift was a success. Of course, it could have been the many drinks that most had prior to our performance. Unfortunately Neal videoed it so it will live on in infamy and I am sure it will make it into Jenn’s photos to the left if you are really compelled to see it. We just “chilled” for the rest of the day, watched some movies, talked and told stories and had a thoroughly enjoyable day. So today we are going to the beach and going to explore the seaside part of town with pics to follow in my next posting. G’day Mates.
No comments:
Post a Comment