And back to the blog...

...and to London after a lovely 10 days in Australia...and all my threats about the weather must have worked, as it was simply beautiful whilst I was there. So many times I heard people commenting that it was like the "summer they didn't have".

Below are a few pictures from my phone as proof! As the purpose of this trip was to attend my PhD graduation, I flew firstly into Adelaide, to be welcomed by a sunny day with 32 degree weather. After dropping my bag at the apartment, I went first to the university to see my supervisors. I took the scenic route along North Terrace as I have always loved the architecture of the buildings...

Example a - The Art Gallery

Example b - The University of Adelaide

After the meeting, the tiredness was starting to take effect so I took myself off to a cafe for a cup of restorative coffee  and a peruse of an Australian design magazine (I do have to say that Australia has a much better standard of coffee provision than the UK).

I just adore this verandah...

My mother flew down from Sydney at lunchtime and we took the tram out to Glenelg for some old-fashioned fish and chips at the beach...

See? Definitely hot and sunny!

The graduation went well, we had a lovely lunch afterwards with my supervisors, and then it was on the plane back to Sydney for a week at home with family.

And some further proof that the Sydney weather was also beautiful...

So, as I promised my sister, I will now officially stop disparaging the Australian weather (for the time being anyway...). As an alternative, I am now being disparaging about the time it took to pass through Border Control at Heathrow on Tuesday morning - I stood in one of those cattle-corralling type queues, that had 16 rows full of people...and took well over an hour and a half to finally get to the desk. This is not something that you appreciate after having being flying for 23 hours....heaven only knows how they are going to cope with the volume of visitors to this country during the Olympics!