Down Under heat wave

Fran  - We've been hearing about your heat wave on our news up here, and how awful it is.   I even saw an internet news story about how the heat is killing bats.    One of my sisters and her DH is currently on a cruise Down Under and no doubt they will tell me about it, too.  And they left overnight temps of  -3F°/-20 C°  here they day before they left home.   Their cruise began in New Zealand ten days ago,  Melbourne and Sydney are their final ports by the end of this week.   I can't wait to hear about it.

Winter ..... actually, while this is colder than what we've become accustomed to,  we really are having more of a more normal winter that we used to see for ages,  until the warmer ones of recent decades.  So naturally, we are all spoiled a bit and being reminded that we will *not* complain when the heat of summer arrives.

Back in December,  DH and I flew to Stockholm, Sweden for a wedding.  Our foreign exchange student, who lived with us fifteen years ago, got married.     We have stayed in contact and visited each other over the years, since then, and were so happy we could go to his wedding.  Sweden is having an unusually warm winter this year (go figure ...!)  and it was actually warmer in Stockholm than in Tennessee!

We stayed in a hotel that was close by to the wedding venue in Stockholm, and next to the heart of their shopping district.    DH and I passed this park that had an ice skating rink.  Even on a day with very light rain, people continued to skate!:

We also went to NK, a very famous and large department store  in Stockholm.  Their Christmas tree went up through the center of the store, and was approx. four or five stories tall!

 

 

We had a lovely time and were so happy that we made the trip.