December 12th 2019

Hi All 

Time for the annual letter of good wishes for Christmas and the New Year etc.….

The year has flown so fast this year so much so that I am not really ready for Christmas.  However……..

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After we left Baku we flew to Iran for an 18 day tour, we were the only two on the tour along with our marvellous guide and driver Sajji.  This was the highlight of our time away. The people of Iran (young and old) were friendly, welcoming and very hospitable.  Despite concerns of friends and family there was never a time that we felt unsafe. The architecture (particularly the mosques) and history of that country is amazing and some of the sites we visited date back to 500BC.  We visited a couple of areas of the desert there, very hot and even though we were there in autumn it didn’t get below 30 degrees plus each day. We loved it.  For a desert country they also had many parks and gardens in the cities and villages, every street was tree-lined. Tehran was a real eye-opener, so many trees. Some of the gardens that are over 400 years old are just beautiful with gravity fed fountains and cascades and then the water which comes from the mountains is fed out to the villages for crop irrigation.  I tried pomegranates which are their main fruit, nice but I liked the plums and apricots better. Also so much saffron, even the sugar crystals you get with your cup of tea infused with saffron. Yum

We returned home to a garden choking with weeds, so spent our first few weeks at home getting our garden back into some semblance of order.  We have had Marg and Norm visit and then last week we went to Melbourne to stay with our long-time friends Sandy and Andy, for a couple of days.  We thoroughly enjoyed both visits with old friends. Now we are 2 weeks away from Christmas and I had better start thinking about making Christmas puddings.

Our best wishes, to you all, have a great Christmas, treat yourselves well and take care.