We're back!

Yesterday DH and I arrived home from our short stay in Sydney...

We left on Wednesday morning, a day later than we had originally planned. An elderly friend had passed away the week before and her funeral was on Tuesday morning. For the sum of an extra $65 each, the airline graciously allowed us to rebook the flight for Wednesday morning instead.
It was very cloudy...

The plane we were on provided iPads for each passenger, for the entertainment instead of the little screens every few rows or so.  This way we got to choose what entertainments we wanted just like on the International flights for Economy. I watched an episode of 'Big Bang Theory' that I hadn't seen before :-)

It was very cloudy as we circled the city ready to land...

Our accommodation was right in the city, in Pitt Street... on the way I took a few photos through the taxi windows...

All of a sudden I recognised where I was when we came up to this intersection... we were turning left into Oxford St!

DH and I had taken only carry on luggage as we had tickets to a matinee performance of 'The Addams Family', and wanted to be clear of the airport as soon as possible after landing. We were so lucky...there were no delays at Brisbane airport and we actually arrived in Sydney a few minutes early. So we had time to check in to our apartment, walk a number of blocks down to the Capitol Theatre and even have lunch before the show started. 

The show was such fun!! John Waters who played Gomez, was wonderful in the part, and Chloe Dallimore who played Morticia was just delightful! A Queensland 'boy', Russell  Dykstra, played Uncle Fester and what a great job he did too, as did the other main actors! Added to that, the excellent ensemble cast of singers and dancers and the orchestra made for a very enjoyable show.

When we came out of the theatre after the show, it was pouring with rain; and of course our rain ponchos were back at our accommodation :-/  The next day, the weather was the same but it didn't stop us! lol

It's been like looking in at an ant colony here on Tuesday...

Yet another scheduled blog post written on Tuesday night.
My reference to an ant colony is my way of describing how busy the building site was next door today. Brad the Builder seems to be an amazing organiser with all the resources and tradespersons turning up at just the right time to get on with the job of building all these houses.

These boys arrived along with the machinery before I got up this morning! ( So now you know I stayed in my nice warm bed till after 7 am! lol) This is the view from my sewing room side window...the outlines of the buildings is easily seen...

 Now by lunch time the scene looked like this... it looks like a Time Team dig! lol

Looking towards the back of the property here... some loads of gravel have been left...

If you look closely, the footings are in place for house #1... 

Looks like 'knock off' time now...the equipment is being loaded back into the trucks...

We certainly get a ringside seat at this 'show' lol!

Random Stuff...

When I was in New Zealand, I bought some items as gifts for my girls, some friends and of course some items to give my wonderful neighbour and her family, to say thank you for collecting the mail and feeding Eduardo. And I also bought some yarns and fabrics as souvenirs for me! :-) I spoiled myself buying beautiful NZ mohair, some alpaca and also some balls of  merino and possum blend yarns...yum! :-)

I bought one more skein of mohair but it is now a scarf!

I bought a smallish amount of patchwork fabrics from a number of stores along the way... I know that some people try to avoid buying random fat quarters, preferring to buy larger amounts of less variety, but I usually find some project in which to use my oddments collection.  

Now this fabric panel came in the mail last Friday...a birthday surprise from my SIL in Melbourne; it's full of whimsy with those angels! :-)

Now look at these goodies that I bought from Maree at our bloggers meet on Sunday. I had decided to use variegated threads to embroider my framed hexagons from Designs by Fee. And these lovely threads fit the bill perfectly! Now I just have to get the right fabric to transfer Fee's designs to, and I will finally start on that project... and it must be about 8 or 9 months since the first mail out of those :-/ lol (have finally ordered some hanky linen to work the embroidery on )

Beautiful embroidery threads

 My main project goal at the moment is to sew as many blankets as possible out of the small mountain of donated squares that have found their way to my place!  I have like an assembly line...I'm double crocheting a firmer edge around these rectangles and bundling them into groups of 30...then I will sew the bundles into a blanket. So I have one full bundle of 30 and another pile started. When I run out of all the regular sized shapes, I'll start on the more irregular ones...that's where the real challenge is!

Viewing Dunedin from on high :-), but first a little bit about our next adventure..

This post and the one before it have been 'scheduled' as I wrote both on Tuesday evening. Because early on Wednesday morning DH and I will have flown to Sydney...

'But you've only just got home from a holiday!' you say...and yes that is true. But being self indulgent retirees we organised this other trip so we could get some 'culture'! lol  

Last year, while holidaying in Victoria about this time, my relatives there said they would take us to see the Archibald Prize finalists' exhibition...but they had got their dates wrong and that exhibition was actually opening after we had gone home...bit of a disappointment. So DH organised a trip so we could see this year's finalists while they were being shown in Sydney (Art Gallery of NSW) which we'll see either Thursday or Friday . 

But on Wednesday we are going to see a show, The Addams Family. Originally we were flying down on Tuesday morning but we rebooked so we could attend a funeral of an elderly friend on Tuesday. We don't have much time between landing in Sydney  and when the matinee performance starts so we've just got carry - on luggage. On Thursday evening we will be attending the opening of a Photographic Exhibition in Surrey Hills,which will showcase work of my nephew's wife. (We just want to show support for these young members of the family...the photos are ...ahem... a bit risque. 

Then on Friday, our last night there, we're dining with my nephew and his wife quite early (5pm) and then making our way to the Circular Quay area to look at the illuminations for the Vivid Festival which starts that night. 

Now, some more of Dunedin...on the afternoon that we arrived, after we had explored a little of the centre of the city, we drove up to a lookout. 

At the lookout, there is a memorial to the early settlers...these 2 young men had climbed up on top of the memorial...I think they did that to impress the young ladies ... :-/

The plaque explains the strong links to Scotland...

There are some wonderful old buildings in Dunedin and unfortunately I didn't get many photos of them. On the next day we took a little tour of the city and then went on the most wonderful rail excursion...but I'll tell you all about that next time I write my travelogue :-)

Day 1 in Dunedin...

We've been home a week now but I mentioned that I would occasionally do some more posts of our travels in NZ and this is one of those posts.
The last travelogue post was about our time visiting Invercargill and Bluff. We then travelled to Dunedin, a busy and bustling city with a lot of interesting history. It is also a  'University city' with the University of Otago there. One thing we noted on this visit was the difficulty in finding somewhere to park the car but maybe this just seemed to be a problem after those quieter places we had visited :-) such as Te Anau and Wanaka. Arriving in Dunedin in the early afternoon, we just had a look around that first day.

This is representative of the beautiful country that we drove though to get to Dunedin

One view of the Cadbury factory in Dunedin...

The next photos were taken at the front of the beautiful old railway station...

This photo below is taken at the street behind the station...

And the following photos are taken inside the station...

A closer view of the beautiful mosaic on the floor of the station...

Now these are some other photos taken on the outside of the station building...

I took a photo of these columns at the front of the station because the dark stone reminded me of Edinburgh 

This is the view looking across the road from the station...

If you look closely you can see a cylindrical building...that's another view of the Cadbury factory. We didn't bother to go on a factory tour this time but DsD1 did and she told us that unlike the Cadbury factory in Tasmania, in this one you can still walk around the factory on the tour.

And here is a photo taken of one of the busy streets...this one had lots of cafes, bars and restaurants which were all very busy on that Saturday afternoon. (But Knit World was closed by the time we got there)

 In the next post that I write about Dunedin I will tell you all about a lookout that we went to which had great views of the city.