A Lovely Visit from Holly!

Holly scheduled a two week interlude between internships so she could come down under for a visit. While two weeks may seem like a long time, it really isn’t especially in this case and the time flew by. At least the weekend in the middle was made into a 3 day trip to the Blue Mountains where we explored one of the Jenolan Caves and rode a practically vertical rail line down to the bottom of a gorge. It was fun! Well, at least that’s my story and I’m sticking with in spite of Holly’s screams and cursing me for suggesting we sit in the front seat (heh heh heh). It was better than Disneyland!

Holly also provided a great excuse to get together with all the people she’s met in the Gong. We had a great Italian dinner at Ryan’s Hotel with coworkers Jan and Bernie along with Jan’s daughter Di and her new boyfriend Ash who is a great guy. Jan and Holly shared an incredible wine, Howling Wolves 2008 Cab-Merlot that was like velvet across your tongue with every sip. I don’t think it’s sold in Bottle-O’s but can be bought on line and I certainly will do that!

We also went to see Iron Man 2 with more coworkers Michael, Estelle and Andre. Michael introduced us to a great Chinese restaurant next to the theatre he and his wife like and he was right, it was delicious. Those three also headed up to Dubbo for a long weekend to see Michael’s wife Val, who is working on a nursing internship. Dubbo is about a 6 hour drive and is home to the largest zoo in Australia having the animals in large natural outdoor settings. There’s a 6 kilometre track that meanders through the zoo and you can rent bicycles which they did. It sounded great and the weather cooperated with the cloud cover arriving on their last day. It is raining now over quite a bit of Eastern Australia, typical for this time of year.

Holly and I also had the pleasure of Mark and Kath’s company, going to a local high end, kind of Italian flavoured restaurant where they have wood fired pizzas and great pastas. They have unique dishes like smoked salmon pizza and other unusual and creative food. It is very good and for what they do, very reasonable. It’s a BYO so we brought our own wine and some beer and had a great feed. Afterwards, we walked across the street to the Frat for desert and coffee to end a very enjoyable evening. Mark and Kath are such great people. I am so luck to have met them here in Oz.

It is very tough living apart and these visits are not getting any easier. I suspect there will be changes very soon and when all the options are thought though will let everyone know what we’ll do. Holly would like to come down under and work for a couple years but we’ll see if all that works out. It is difficult to be so far away from home, family and friends. I guess I need more visitors…are you getting the hint yet?

At least her trip back home was much better than the trip over. Well, what greeted her is a different story and maybe I’ll mention that some other time. But for now are some of the pictures from my wonderful (but very short) time with Holly.