Christmas Day

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Entry by Jules

Thursday 25/12/08 - Christmas Day!

We woke up at a fairly civilised time for a Christmas morning. But then, it didn’t really feel like Christmas, despite the carols on the radio (interspersed with South Park songs at 9am - not exactly appropriate), and we haven’t felt like time has been leading up to the ‘big day’ either. I guess it’s been a combination of things; hot weather in December is not Christmassy; there are far less decorations up here than you would expect back in England; it doesn’t smell like Christmas - no hot cinnamon, no mulled wine; shops and restaurants aren’t shutting down for 2 days and there is no rush to buy the last remaining tin of baked bins; and finally we are not with our families and friends. It’s all a bit like an August bank holiday weekend (with the sun). So basically, Merry Christmas to everyone (but it isn’t really!).

For traditions sake though we decided to head to the beach for the day. St Kilda beach is just a short walk from the hostel, luckily for Rich as he was carrying the heavy picnic bags full of our lunch, so we trooped off there at about 10.30am. We thought this was late but clearly not as we had the pick of the beach to set up.

Our picnic lunch consisted of a variety of things (no turkey in sight though) including duck and orange pate, cheese, bread, crisps, bagel chips (yum), peppers stuffed with feta, Moroccan salad and a cake each. We ate this on a café table on the esplanade, along with plenty of others who all had the same idea.

The beach filled up very quickly during the morning, mainly by visitors to the country (we’re not sure where all the Ozzies went for the day) so once we had our lunch we decided to go back to the hostel, drop off the leftovers and then head for a walk along the front, down to the marina.

There was a reason for the walk - we wanted to check out a particular restaurant. On the Thursday night before we left England we watched our old favourite programme Neighbours. In this episode two of the characters, Fitzy and Libby, were going for a lunch date. The camera panned out at a restaurant called Riva - St Kilda! Clearly this was fate so we had to take at look at the place and perhaps have a meal there one night. Riva sits right on the marina, overlooking the huge and very expensive boats moored up there.

From the marina we walked back along the esplanade. Alongside the footpath/cycleway is a to scale representation of the solar system (one to a billionth scale I think), starting with the sun and then moving away, at the correct distance, the rest of the planets. Whilst the sun was a fairly large structure, perhaps 1.5 metres in diameter, the other planets were more the size of a pea. Very odd.

In the afternoon we opened some presents Rich’s parents had given up to take with us. By now these were getting a little bit battered in the bottom of the case but it was nice to open something on Christmas Day. A quick chat on Skype to them followed before we went in search of our evening meal; which was a really amazing Thai; then another Skype session with my family before bed.

I guess today was the first time when I really felt homesick. I missed having that warm feeling in the pit of your stomach that you get from the excitement of Christmas morning. I small price to pay, in the long run however, given the amazing adventure we are having and the exciting things we have been able to do.

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Comments

[Steve and Shelle]

Christmas from home
My husband and I are from Australia and experienced our first Christmas overseas this year in London. And for us it didn't feel Christmassy either because it was cold, Christmas for us should be hot! So I know what you mean!