Visiting your old home town - the tricky part

I have lived in three cities, in three different states, and one country town. One of the perennial issues when visiting a former city is to decide: Is this a trip to catch up with friends or is this a trip to catch up with the city. It can be both, but both can be difficult to achieve.

Those of you who live in a different city from your family (and/or friends) will understand this. When you visit your home city it can end up being a string of home visits, sometimes two or three a day just to make sure you've caught up with everyone. Add in a few country relatives and your whole time is taken up leaving no time for catching up with your memories of your former home town. Going from house to house is no fun for the kids and if we did this everytime they'd hate the trip. There has to be a holiday element in there somewhere.

So we tend to divide trips into ones to visit the city and ones to visit the friends. This recent trip to Melbourne was largely a city visit. Our January trip to Perth will be a catch up with family and friends visit.

Even though Melbourne was a city visit we did catch up with a couple of friends.

• Fairlie, The Poolboy, Queenie and Impossible Princess were great hosts and tour guides
  
• S from TeamSAK is looking fabulous despite her illness this year. The kids enjoyed playing with Kingsley.
  
• Ahubby from TeamSAK brought around his new wheels (Firegazer was salivating, and NO he can't have one)
  
• I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to catch up with my friends in the No. 1 Melbourne Ladies Bookclub this time and
  
• Domestic Goddess's family was in Canberra, so we caught up with them on the way back to Sydney.

and to everyone else, I'd love to catch up with you next time I get a leave pass. Or perhaps you might like to come and visit us here...

*images from here and here