Melbourne with George and Sophie

The day George and Sophie came to Melbourne, we spent with John Jepsen.  We had a nice morning catching up with e mail, sorting out our briney clothing and then collected Judith from an appointment for her poor wrist.  John took us all around the city, he didn't need GPS! and then we had lunch in the Botanic Gardens.  The Botanic Gardens in all the cities are wonderful and no wonder, this is a most wonderful place to grow things, semi tropical plants nudge up alongside English oaks and roses, agapanthus grow everywhere, there are statuesque pines and succulent varieties of things that grow in the English hedgerow.  After lunch we drove out to the Brahma Kumaris Retreat Centre in Frankston where we were given an interesting tour.  This was once a r and r for a bank and is on the edge of the bush with walkways through great trees.  This was a good introduction for the philosophers who were looking for somewhere out of town to have a retreat from time to time and the Brahma Kumaris let it out.  Also a good introduction for justthisday, the Brahma Kumaris are unfailingly nice.

Then George and Sophie came to play with us in Melbourne and the scene was set by the place we were staying, GPS found this rather difficult to find and actually took such offence that it froze for the evening.  We were in a bed and breakfast called the Brooklyn Arts Hotel which had 8 bedrooms all highly individual, and it was owned and run by Maggie.  We wish we had taken photographs but it was like living in an emerging artwork in the rather chaotic Victorian mode.   There was even a stuffed parrot in George and Soph's room.  We had a balcony with wonderful wrought iron work and large old comfortable chairs.  We were having dinner with a friend of George and Soph's, Richard Colville.  He was one of the same group that had started with George in John Swire but worked for Cathay Pacific which meant he got family flying perks, he was guiding his parents around Australia and they had an evening to spare before flying back to Hong Kong.  We met in a rather cheery French bistro with a wonderful menu.  The food sounded superb and actually was pretty good but just not quite as good as the words which described it.  We thought that those Cathay perks sounded pretty good for aged parents, the only trouble is that you have to wait until the last minute to know if you get a flight, however, if you are old(er) and retired perhaps it doesn't matter if you have to hang about on stand by especially as you might get a first class seat.