Santa in Sydney.
Since arriving in Australia we have lost many of our small family traditions such as the annual trip to see Santa in Milton Keynes shopping center. We are about to have our third Christmas here in Oz and have started a few new family traditions.
The Milton Keynes Christmas Santa trip has become the train journey to David Jones in Sydney.We hop on an early train at the local station and two hours later arrive in big bustling Sydney.
We go into the beautiful old Queen Victoria Building which has sweeping staircases.The building is like donuts stacked with a great central "hole" that you look down into from the railings around each floor. There is a huge Christmas tree that starts on the ground floor and works its way through the central hall up to the top floor. The tree has 15,000 Swarkofski Crystals hanging from it and is a really beautiful sight. After a coffee and ice cream we walked to David Jones and queued for about 1 1/2 hours to see the big red man! We were suffering severe caffeine lows as we stood in the long queue. There was a mum standing near us with a take away cup of coffee in her hand. The smell of the coffee wafting towards us was so tempting and it was all I could do to stop Mr B from vaulting over the barrier and snatching the cup from her hand!
When we had been into Santa and the kids had had their chat with him we went straight to the coffee shop and met up with my brother Joe, Rhonda and Cian. Cian is walking now and is hilarious. Did he want to sit in his buggy? No! Did he want to eat every edible thing on our table and any table within reach? Yes! He started dipping his fingers in my glass of water and grinning. He knew he was up to no good. When we laughed and said "No" in a very non-assertive voice he got more daring and within minutes we were all soaked!
We reluctantly said goodbye and headed back to the train station and caught the train home. It was a great day and a tradition worth continuing!
