Day 324: Christmas in the city
I got a bit of bonus time to myself in the morning, because Zoe had a late breakfast out with Sarah for her birthday, so I used the time to finish off another unit of my real estate licence course and get it into the mail.
After Sarah dropped Zoe off, she watched a bit of TV before we headed off to the doctor to have another go at freezing off the wart on her hand, and to follow up on the suspected chicken pox.
Zoe's fever had resolved itself, and her spots looked like they were starting to fade. The doctor thought she probably just had a viral rash, and it definitely wasn't chicken pox.
Armed with that good news, I definitely wanted to get out of the house in the afternoon, because Zoe had been watching far too much TV.
Zoe said she wanted to go to the park over at West End, and I wanted to take her into the city in the evening to look at the lights, so I thought a good way to achieve both goals would be to take public transport over to West End and then back to the city.
As the Hawthorne ferry terminal is closed for some upgrades, and I didn't fancy walking home with a tired Zoe from Bulimba late at night, we drove as close to the Bulimba ferry terminal as we could find a park, which was incidentally right next to the Love Street park. Zoe had a bit of a play there, before we walked to the Bulimba ferry terminal and took the cross river over to Teneriffe, and jumped on the CityGlider all the way to the park at West End.
Zoe had a great time playing in the park, which was nice and cool and shady, before we jumped on a CityCat back to the city. We got off at North Quay, and walked down to the Mall and into the Myer Centre to escape the heat.
I'd promised Zoe a bubble tea the next time we were in the Myer Centre, so we went to the bubble tea place and shared one of them.
After that we were just sitting on the Mall taking a break, and Anshu's Mum happened to wander past, so she hung out with us. We went and grabbed some sushi for dinner and then Anshu met up with us.
I wanted to catch the Myer Christmas Parade and Pantomime while we were in there, so we assumed a spot where the parade was due to turn right onto Albert Street and head to King George Square.
The Mall was absolutely packed by the time the parade made it up to where we were, and if Zoe hadn't been on my shoulders she wouldn't have seen anything. I'm glad she got to see though. It was pretty impressive, and even had a Santa sleigh with a couple of deer.
After that we headed over to King George Square with the intention of seeing the Christmas tree get lit up. First we had to sit through the pantomime, which wasn't really worth it. Visibility of the stage was poor, but we sat (or rather stood) through it. Then we had to watch the Gold Lotto City Hall Light Spectacular, which was actually pretty good. All sorts of stuff projected onto City Hall.
That all finished, and everyone started leaving, but the tree still didn't get lit up. Upon enquiry, it seemed that it hadn't survived the most recent storm or something. So that was a bit disappointing.
Anshu and her Mum had headed home during the pantomime, and we headed back to North Quay to get a CityCat back to Bulimba. There was quite a wait. I think the CityCat was running behind schedule or something, and Zoe was getting quite tired and having a bit of a meltdown. Then the fireworks started as a welcome distraction. I didn't even realise there were fireworks scheduled, so that was a pretty cool added bonus.
Zoe fell asleep on the CityCat when I was staring out the window. I had to wake her up when we got to Bulimba, and that didn't go terribly well either, and we had a messy trip back to the car.
We made it back home, and I managed to get Zoe into bed without too much more fuss.