LA_Spokane_SFO

 

 Ok it is now Thursday and last nights mad dash from arriving at hotel and organising ourselves to get to our restaurant booking revealed something else. Jerry had brought only shorts and John had left behind all of his shirts bar the one he was wearing. So although shopping with two guys is not my idea of fun, hitting the shops today was definitely on our agenda. But first we used our morning walk to visit St Patrick's Cathedral, started in the 1858 and only completed in 1939. It opens at 6.30 in advance of a 7am service. There were no takes among us for the morning service but we all found the cathedral moving. We had bets o n the number and demographic for the morning service and were all wrong. We estimate around 50 parishioners and a range of ages.. Jerry had a $2 coin that bought to Tapirs and H John and I each got to light one. After grabbing a quick breakfast is was off to UniQlo for shorts and pants, which was very successful and Jx2 are both now firm fans. We breezed thro...

 

John Mahoney arrived on Monday 27 Jan   2025   for his third visit to Australia. His first two days included Jerry meeting him at the airport in Sydney for the train trip to Newcastle, landing at 47 King St Stockton in the early afternoon, dinner at our place with  Anna, Kate and granddaughter Bénédicte (with a fab Shiraz from Anna and a  beautiful Pavlova made by Benne), surviving a blistering hot Monday by laying low, sharing a pub dinner  with Josh’s family at the Gates Hotel and then experiencing a full a southerly buster as only Australia can deliver.  A southerly buster  is when it is so hot you think it just cannot get any hotter and then a storm arrives with wind and rain and often lightening and the temperature drops in minutes. This was a challenging beginning but the fun was only just starting.  We have planned two “road trips” during John's stay and the first was flying to Melbourne on Wednesday.   We DID get to Melbourne on the d...