Christmas Lunch

[Outdated]

My neighbours have invited me over for drinks for Christmas and I really don’t want to do that. I don’t drink that much these days anyway and once they’ve had a few drinks they get too loud for my liking.

So I decided I’m going to go out for Christmas lunch today. Luckily for me we’re a very multicultural country these days so there’s plenty of restaurants open and doing normal business. Christmas Day is the only day of the year when I enjoy going to the city because it's so empty and quiet.

I’ve just been searching on the net, all the more western style places are open to bookings only and are charging exorbitant prices for special Christmas lunches that don’t really look all the special to me. But for all the different Asian and Middle Eastern nationalities it’s just a normal day like any other. Lucky me.

So today I’m going to go in to the city and see what takes my fancy, spend the day stuffing myself. I’ll wear nice clothes and take the camera with me so I’ll look like a tourist. It’s not going to be a very nice day, temperature only getting up to 20, cold south winds and rain, but that’s good eating weather.

Maybe I’ll report back here afterwards with some pics and food reviews.

 

[Forest Cat]

It’s not going to be a very nice day, temperature only getting up to 20, cold south winds and rain, but that’s good eating weather.

Only up to 20 degrees? It's -17 degrees here.... Enjoy the 20.
Have a nice Christmas lunch.

 

[Outdated]

I don't think I'd cope for very long with -17, I think the novelty would wear off very quickly. But it's relative to what you're used to and to me 20 degrees with a south wind is winter. So yes I'll be wearing a heavy coat and I'll have my big fat woolly socks on. And a singlet on under my shirt.

When I first came down from Darwin I found it quite cool here by comparison, Darwin never gets hotter than about 38 but it's humid. Down in Adelaide it's drier air so you don't notice the heat as much. On a couple of days it got up to 46 in Adelaide and all the homeless people were hanging out in the interstate bus station because of the air conditioning. They thought I was mental because I kept going back outside to warm up a bit, it was too cold in there for me.

 

[Outdated]

Christmas social obligations are now complete, one short phone call and one short whatsapp conversation, all done and dusted until next year. Another half hour or so and I'll jump on a train in to the city. Go for a walk in the botanic gardens or something, work up a bit of an appetite.

 

[Wolfnox]

Christmas social obligations are now complete, one short phone call and one short whatsapp conversation, all done and dusted until next year. Another half hour or so and I'll jump on a train in to the city. Go for a walk in the botanic gardens or something, work up a bit of an appetite.

Christmas much different in Australia?

 

[Neri]

Christmas much different in Australia?

Well, it's summer here, summer solstice time of year, so there's that. Other than that probably not much different. We haven't even transitioned to "Australianizing" decorations, it's still fir trees and holly and snowy landscapes and big white bearded red costumed dudes and candy canes and reindeer everywhere. There is a tiny, minor movement to incorporating Australian natives into the decorations but it hasn't caught on in a big way (yet).
Lots of tinsel and we pretend it's winter which is reeeeaaallly weird. Personally, I love all the summer fruits in season, like mangos and cherries and berries so, for me, christmas is about time with family and celebrating all the beautiful seasonal fruits.

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

Hope yo

My neighbours have invited me over for drinks for Christmas and I really don’t want to do that. I don’t drink that much these days anyway and once they’ve had a few drinks they get too loud for my liking.

So I decided I’m going to go out for Christmas lunch today. Luckily for me we’re a very multicultural country these days so there’s plenty of restaurants open and doing normal business. Christmas Day is the only day of the year when I enjoy going to the city because it's so empty and quiet.

I’ve just been searching on the net, all the more western style places are open to bookings only and are charging exorbitant prices for special Christmas lunches that don’t really look all the special to me. But for all the different Asian and Middle Eastern nationalities it’s just a normal day like any other. Lucky me.

So today I’m going to go in to the city and see what takes my fancy, spend the day stuffing myself. I’ll wear nice clothes and take the camera with me so I’ll look like a tourist. It’s not going to be a very nice day, temperature only getting up to 20, cold south winds and rain, but that’s good eating weather.

Maybe I’ll report back here afterwards with some pics and food reviews.

Hope you have a good meal.
Sounds like a great way to do it, dress up and have fun no matter what.

 

[SusanLR]

Sounds like a good day there.
I would like to have eaten out today, but in America, almost everything is closed.

Went out driving around an urban area by a lake looking at Christmas lights and the roaming deer on Christmas Eve.
Even the fast-food places were closed, except for a McDonald's.
Nothing will be open around here again until Tuesday.

 

[Outdated]

Christmas much different in Australia?

Yes and no. A lot of people here have British backgrounds and so those traditions are very strong here, but we are no longer dominated by a monoculture and there are a lot of different nationalities here that don't do Christmas, and that is much more accepted these days.

So all the things you see in shops and all the advertising would be very similar to your own but what you do for Christmas is no longer an obligatory social convention.

As a teenager I had Turkish friends that loved Christmas. They were Muslim but that was fine because Jesus was the second great prophet and celebrating the birth of a prophet was perfectly acceptable. They celebrated a little differently though, because they were celebrating the birth of a baby boy. What do you do when a son is born? Hand out cognac and cigars. I loved going over their place for Christmas.

It's also summer here, and the beginning of the summer school holidays so there's kids everywhere until February.

 

[Outdated]

So I had a good day. The busy streets of Adelaide, just the way I like them.

I went for a walk through the city centre first, just to see what was around. It was only 9:30 in the morning so nothing much was open, although the smells coming from the Chinese bakery were amazing.

There was an Aussie cafe open so I went there for breakfast. I bought a bacon and double egg roll that turned out to be humongous, with a large iced coffee as well for $10, that was good value. Then I went for a walk along the river front.

Near the botanic gardens there was a large colony of fruit bats. I’m not a big fan of them, they’re very noisy and they stink. 50 years ago they didn’t exist here, it’s only as fruit farming became more extensive between Adelaide and Melbourne that they’ve been able to migrate here from the east coast.

The botanic gardens were nice but they turned out to be quite busy, lots of people setting up for picnic lunches. They were all either very optimistic and/or not capable of checking weather forecasts. The wind started picking up and I could feel that it was going to rain soon so I headed back in to the CBD.

This is just a simple water fountain but the wind was so stiff that it looked more like a loose collection of steam vents.

I was still full from the cafe earlier in the morning and didn’t end up buying any lunch but I walked around enjoying all the wonderful smells. The part of the city that’s designated as China Town seems to be more Japanese and general Asian these days and all the Chinese restaurants are out in Gouger Street and Franklin Street.

This restaurant shows the highest recommendation any Chinese restaurant could ever get – it was packed with Asian people. On another day when I’m hungry I’ll definitely go here and check it out.

After wandering around for about 4 hours I decided I’d had enough and went home. I figured I could do with an afternoon nap so I went to bed and woke up 7 hours later. It was a good day.

 

[MNAus]

Glad you had a good day mate. After much nudging from my wife, this year we went out to the pub for Christmas lunch and it was outstanding. I was seriously edgy about the whole thing, and it left me with more free time than I'm used to, but much enjoyed. Glad to see there's space for the fruit bats in ADL, sadly the recent arrivals here in north Sydney seem to be intent on cutting down all possible trees, so our flying fox population is screwed.

 

[Outdated]

Glad to see there's space for the fruit bats in ADL, sadly the recent arrivals here in north Sydney seem to be intent on cutting down all possible trees, so our flying fox population is screwed.

The bats here are a bit of a problem, there's no food for them in the native bush here so they only live in inhabited areas, near fruit farms and at the botanic gardens.

We have a similar issue with Koalas, over on the east coast they're becoming an endangered species, here we introduced them on Kangaroo Island and they breed to plague proportions there, they have to be culled every few years to protect all the other native wildlife.

 

[Neri]

I perked up when my brother, who lives up here, rang me from Southern Tassie, where our mum and youngest sister live with her kid's. It was good to hear from bro, who is down for Chrissy, and then mum, who turned 75 yesterday, yep she was a christmas baby. I had a good talk with both of them. By the time I thought of food it was nearly 4.00. I made us (my guyfriend and I) a fruit salad which we enjoyed in the heat of the day.

Then I rang my youngest son, and my oldest son back, while having a cool bath, then dropped some spices down to youngest son, who made himself an enchiladas with them (he sent me photos, looked super delicious!) Tried ringing my second youngest son, he eventually texted me back, he'd been asleep.

Texted my oldest daughter, the one that I am not having the easiest time with, just an "I hope you are having a nice christmas, I love you". Had had lovely texts with youngest daughter the night before, she sent me loads of lovely photos of her and my grandson doing christmasy stuff. She lives in Grafton with her baby, partner and inlaws.

We had salmon, home made tartare and greek salad for dinner.
We got a summer storm in the evening. It was lovely. It's sooooo humid up here!

 

[Neri]

The bats here are a bit of a problem, there's no food for them in the native bush here so they only live in inhabited areas, near fruit farms and at the botanic gardens.

We have a similar issue with Koalas, over on the east coast they're becoming an endangered species, here we introduced them on Kangaroo Island and they breed to plague proportions there, they have to be culled every few years to protect all the other native wildlife.

We have flying foxes/ fruit bats here. They are stinky and noisy. I quite like them.
We have a koala sanctuary attached to the local uni. I used to go there, and it wasn't uncommon to see them crawl/walking, with their bums in the air, down the street or across the road between the high school and the uni.

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

Three cheers for the botanical garden! While I was in California I visited one.

My Christmas brunch consisted of tangerines, potato chips and left over waffles. That’s what I grabbed at 4 am headed out for an old stomping (canoeing) ground. It was cloudy, but no rain.

 

[Forest Cat]

Other than that probably not much different.

Some things are different.

 

[Outdated]

Some things are different.

Definitely. We get a second public holiday here, today is Boxing Day, so Happy Box!

 

[Outdated]

We have a koala sanctuary attached to the local uni. I used to go there, and it wasn't uncommon to see them crawl/walking, with their bums in the air, down the street or across the road between the high school and the uni.

There's healthy populations of them all through the Adelaide Hills and they wander into the outer suburbs quite a bit, they're also plentiful in the Murray Riverlands, it's only on the east coast where they're dying out.

 

[Forest Cat]

Definitely. We get a second public holiday here, today is Boxing Day, so Happy Box!

Happy Boxing Day

 

[tazz]

Definitely. We get a second public holiday here, today is Boxing Day, so Happy Box!

Here too. Which means - more family visits