Arriving back from Sydney we headed straight over to have dinner at Andrew and Aimie's. Jo and James also came over and we all cooed over Josh, Andrew and Aimie's four month old son, who was on his best behaviour. After giving James his birthday present - cricket set of course. We then took the ferry over to Manly on Wednesday and met up with Gill, yet another friend from back home, and did a 5km walk along the harbour which was pretty but hot so it was a relief to jump into the beautiful harbour water for a cooling dip. After Steve was woken up for a 6.30 game of cricket Ali went to meet up with Gill on Thursday for some retail time, Steve watched the cricket. Wedding dress shopping is not to be recommended in Sydney if anybody is thinking about it; snotty ladies telling me what I should wear and calling me 'close-minded' when i said i wasn't interested in certain dresses. After a few attempts, I've concluded that a London purchased dress will be better, despite every person associated with the wedding business saying 6 months is never gonig to be enough time to buy a dress.

Friday Ali went with James and Izzy to see Charlie and Lola live at the Sydney Opera House, while this may not have been a cultural highlight of their calendar, it was the first time I'd been inside and the experience of looking for ogres under our seats with Jamse couldn't have been improved had Dame Kiri Te Kanawa herself been there. Meanwhile, Steve watched the cricket. We then babysat on Friday night and looked after the kids on Saturday and we were pretty pooped so headed out for a nice quiet pizza, Steve had managed to watch some cricket during the day although James is a lot more persistent than me in nagging him to do something else. Sunday we all went for lunch at R&R's friends, Ben and Sarah's. They also live in a beautiful place with a great deck/garden. Sitting outside drinking cold wine in the sunshine we could certainly see the appeal of Sydney life.