On Top of the World

It’s almost the end of another year! This New Year’s Eve, we’ve decided to go down to the beach. The weather’s warming up this week so hopefully it will be a nice evening. We’re going to get fish and chips and eat it on the sand, then watch the fireworks at midnight.

We thought about going to Glenelg (a popular beachside spot), but it’s probably going to be full of teenagers getting drunk at the Grand and falling around the streets, and we don’t really feel like trying to cope with that (I felt so old and prissy writing that!), so we’re going somewhere that will hopefully be a little quieter, but still have people around. I’m quite looking forward to it!

I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas holidays, whatever you were up to. For us, it was a quiet one spent having lunch at my parents’ place, and then having M’s sister over for afternoon tea. On the 27th we went to Wallaroo for the day, and although it was a bit windy it was still nice to go for a walk along the beach.

Now I just have to decide what I’m going to spend my Christmas money on - I’ve got a little over $300 but I can’t think of anything “big” that I want, so I’m not sure what to buy. I thought about a new media player with a higher capacity than the one I have, but I think I’ll stick with the one I’ve got. Maybe I could get a new camera… but mine is still fine so I don’t really need to upgrade. There aren’t any PDAs I want, as I still really like the one I have. So I’m in a bit of a pickle! I’ll have to hunt through the masses of junk mail we got after Christmas, advertising the sales, and maybe something will jump out at me.

Do you ever have times where you know what you want to blog about, and you’re looking forward to writing about it, but when it comes to sitting down and actually doing it, you just can’t be bothered?

I took this photo in Sydney as the monorail was just arriving. Of course, it only travels on a single line, but I thought it was still appropriate for the theme!

I took this photo when we went to Las Vegas last year. Those of you who live or have been there will know that a lot of the casinos offer free shows every night, and this photo is from the Treasure Island show. We tried to see as many different shows as we could while we were there; we also enjoyed the fountains of the Bellagio. Very impressive!

After a long, boring flight we are back home. I didn’t end up getting the upgrade because they said they’d overbooked business class, but as it turned out, some people didn’t show up so I could have upgraded. Oh well. It was nice to finally arrive home, even though we had only been gone for 2 weeks. The plane flew directly over our house on the way to the airport, and it was nice to look down and see it.

We had a great time, and bought a lot more stuff than we did on our holiday last year. We didn’t do as much touristy stuff either, but did go to the Top of Rockefeller Center, and went ice skating on the rink there, which is something I really wanted to do.

The other things we’d wanted to do were to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center. Well, on the day of the parade it was pouring with rain, and was damn cold. We found a spot at about 7:45, with the parade due to start at 9. At the spot we were at, though, the parade took half an hour to get to us, so by the time we actually saw anything, we were wet (although we did have umbrellas), frozen to the bone and losing the feeling in our extremities. We stayed for an hour, then shoved our way through the crowd which was probably 5 or 6 people deep, and found a coffee shop. Mmmm coffee. Still, we got some photos and videos, and we watched the rest from our warm, dry hotel room. Of course, the next day was absolutely perfect weather.

For the tree lighting ceremony, we went there after M got back from his conference, and there were already thousands of people there, and the closest we could get to the tree was a big tv screen positioned around the corner. So we gave up on that and had dinner at a very nice (and expensive) steakhouse. We went back to the hotel room and watched the ceremony from there.

So the two things we’d really wanted to do didn’t go as well as we’d hoped, but we still had a great time. When M was at the conference I discovered a coffee shop near Bryant Park so I got myself a coffee and went over to the park and watched the people ice skating, and wandered around the outdoor shops in the park. It was very relaxing, and I did it again on the second day he was at the conference as well. The rest of the time on my own was spent walking to and around various shops.

So now we’re home, and the cats were pleased to see us long enough to get us to let them outside. We went to bed a little before 9:00, and were woken up by Jack at around 6 this morning. Even though I’m still tired, I couldn’t sleep any more, and since M was awake as well, we got up. At least we’ll be tired tonight and hopefully get a good night’s sleep before going back to work tomorrow.

There’ll probably be more about the holiday later, but for now I’m off to get some coffee and toast!

Today is my final day in NYC - next week I’ll be back to check your blogs!

Here’s something we saw in Paris that we thought was really cool. A lot of the traffic lights have a set of “mini lights” at eye level when you’re sitting in your car, and some of them have lights especially for cyclists!