It took us 37+ hours to get home, but boy was it worth it! It was a surprise trip for my Grandma’s 90th Birthday & only our immediate family knew what we were up to. It was hard to keep it a secret, especially on social media, considering how excited we were, but we lasted right up until the birthday without anyone spilling the beans ?
After a fairly seamless 37 hours of travel time, we touched down in Adelaide, unscathed. We managed to see all our family, catchup with a few friends and plan our entire wedding from finding our location, to meeting our celebrant, talking with the florist and trying 27 different cake flavours! (We still didn’t choose a flavour ?) Before no time it was time to head west over to Perth. I hadn’t been back to my ‘hometown’ for at least 8 years so it was funny to be going back, but everything was just exactly as I had remembered it. From driving over the hill at West Coast Drive and seeing the magnificent Indian Ocean to rolling into Yiayia’s driveway with the car sitting under the pergola.
The night before the 90th celebration we brought Yiayia to the AirBnB so she would know we’d be at the party the next day ? Tuesday saw us head to the Duxton Hotel for an afternoon tea with 65 of our closest & immediate family members ? Unfortunately, some skata with Bronchitis came to the party and spread it to some of our oldest 65 family members. (they’ve officially been crossed off the wedding list ?). Even unluckier for us, the bronchitis turned into the flu, which saw me out for week 2 of the holiday and saw Remi to be a delirious mess for the 37+ journey home and miss a full week of work when we made it back to NYC. At the time, we were super pissed off that someone had taken half of our PTO away from us and taken the time away we could have been spending with our family who we only get to see maybe, at best, once a year. But in hindsight; we still had a wonderful time and crammed some amazing memories into the first half of the trip that will carry us through until next time.
Highlights:
- Seeing our family ?
- Being lucky enough to have a coast-to-coast trip
- The beach & the Perth sunshine ☀️
- Sunshine sunshine sunshine + clean air
- Fat. Hot. Chips. ?
- Finding a wedding dress ?? having a makeup trial, seeing the venue, tasting the menu + eating all the cake
- Squeezing in a weekend of Melbourne
- After deciding we were too sick to see anyone or do anything fun, hopping over to the MCG to see West Coast VS Geelong final (and then back to the hotel to be in bed before the last quarter started ??)
