New Year's Eve

Jonathan has developed a cough.  It's a dry, tickly, useless cough that he walks around carrying on his shoulder. 

On Sunday, it was starting to appear.  On Monday, we walked to set up our bank account, inspected our dream apartment (fingers crossed into little braids that we will be approved to live there), and stopped by a pharmacy for cough medicine.  Then we gave up and returned to the hotel to appease the cough.

Tuesday morning, New Year's Eve, the cough was out in front.  I decided the cough must stay in the hotel.  Tim said if the cough had to stay in, could he please go out for the parties on his own?  I said that was fine, but that meant I got to go out on my own in the morning.  I wanted to see the Melbourne museum, where, I have heard, they have interesting bugs. 

But then the cough didn't want to be left behind.  It dwindled away to almost nothing just by the act of getting out of bed, eating breakfast, and getting its teeth brushed.  So we all decided to go to the Melbourne Museum....  Until I got an email from a realtor.  She could show me a property in 45 minutes.  Interested?

The tram would get us there in exactly 44 minutes and 30 seconds.  So we ran out the door onto the tram and off to see a property instead.  Ugly property.  We could live there, but it is well down the list from our dream apartment (still crossing our fingers that we get approved to live there). 

Now we were off on a completely different side of the city from the museum.  The realtor told us that the beach was only a 20 minute tram ride from where we stood.  I had been telling everyone I would go to the beach on New Year's Eve.  So we went!

We weren't completely prepared for the beach, as you can see from the above photo.  No swimsuits.  Or sunscreen.  But look how well covered we were.  Surely we didn't need sunscreen dressed like that?

After about an hour or so walking along the pier and the sand, we all had sunburned arms.  My sunburn line matches my shirt sleeve line perfectly.  We may have to ease into wearing swimsuits.

Home from the beach, back at the hotel.  We told the cough that it could go out for fireworks, but only if it took a nap.

So I took a lovely two hour nap, while the boy with the cough played video games and Tim surfed the internet.  At least one of us was rested up for New Years.

The trams were all free starting at 6pm.  We took the tram from right outside the hotel into the central business district.  They had shut off all traffic along the major street running south for the evening, so we walked several blocks to the park by the river.  Then we walked farther still to the park by the stadium where they would be launching the early fireworks. 

There were about a billion families with kids parked in the park on blankets, listening to music, eating food, playing games.  What a great way to spend a summer evening!  We joined them. 

 

 

Then we watched the Muppets movie in the park until the early fireworks at 9:30 pm. 

 

Most days, people do not complain about the abundance of trees in an urban environment.  However, on New Year's Eve, there were just too many trees in Melbourne, obscuring the firework view.  But we made adjustments, and we were able to see most of the fireworks.

 

Fireworks finished, we decided to take the cough back to the hotel, since it was coming on stronger again, and since it was late.

 

Of course, the little guy with the smallest bladder needed to stop along the way.  So we got into a queue for the toilets at about 10pm.  At 10:40, we reached the front of said queue. 

 

Now fighting foot traffic upstream, arm in arm, we walked back through the hundreds of thousands of people in the central business district, back up the hill to where the trams were running again, and then back on foot to our hotel, arriving at 11:20 pm. 

 

With just 40 minutes to spare until midnight, was there really any point in putting the boy to bed?  We brushed teeth, gathered cameras, and went up to the top of the hotel for a view of the midnight fireworks.

 

For future reference, the top floor of our hotel is not the best place for midnight firework viewing.  But you already knew that.  There was a giant eucalyptus tree that obscured some of the biggest fireworks.  But even so, the show was pretty impressive.  They lit fireworks off the tops of buildings in the city, and in the docklands and near the harbor.  And everything was perfectly synchronized and coordinated from all those locations.  It was amazing! 

 

In early 2014, we returned to our hotel room, took a couple of pictures,

 

 

wished family and friends a Happy New Year! via Facebook, so that we could be the very very very first to wish a Happy New Year about 18 hours in advance of most of their Happy New Years (most of them still aren't in 2014, and we're already nearly through with New Year's Day here).  And then before we had finished, I looked over and saw that one of us was already completely zonked out.

 

 

Except for the sunburned arms, I think that New Year's Eve works much much better as a summer night holiday than a deep midwinter holiday.  I proposed moving the new year permanently in the northern hemisphere to the end of July -- as long as we can still take two weeks off work at Christmas.

 

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!