A Tennessee Girl in Oz: A very merry Christmas Eve

I had to work on Monday, but Michelle faithfully blogged about their day on their blog.

On Tuesday, we decided that we would do what all the Sydneysiders do on Christmas Eve: go to the Sydney Fish Markets! It's very Australian to eat fish/seafood on Christmas Day, so we thought it was only appropriate that we made our holiday celebration as authentic as possible.

First we met up with Chris and Michelle at their hotel while they ate breakfast.

One of the highlights of the day was checking out this pancake machine at the hotel. You pressed a button and it made you 2 pancakes! We were so taken with it, one of the hotel attendants opened the machine for us so we could see the inner-workings. Yes, we are easily entertained! =)

Then, with everyone fueled up, we headed out to the fish markets! We had expected it to be pretty busy, and it was!

We out ourselves in the capable hands of Chris, and he scoped out the best looking fish. (Yes, we did our once-a-year fish feast for Christmas!)

We ended up with a good haul:

2 King crab legs/person
Fillet of cod
Calamari
Prawns
Scallops

After a grocery run to get all the accessories for our Christmas dinner, we headed back to the apartment for an afternoon of cooking, food, and games. Can you think of a better day??!

Somehow we fit everything into the fridge!

We made crab legs and fish tacos during our Christmas Eve afternoon/evening. Chris and Michelle handled all the cooking while Toby and I assisted and took care of getting Christmas entertainment going and making things feel Christmas-y!

We also mixed in some Swedish celebration too: we had Swedish snaps with our fish tacos! (Brought courtesy of Chris & Michelle.) It's a liquer that's made from herbs, and it was pretty full-on. It's meant to help help digest fat so you can eat more - definitely what we needed in our day!

The snaps in our variety pack! Don't worry - we didn't drink these in one go!

We took a quick break in the evening to get some fresh air.

Drinks and games, of course! And it got a little chilly - no more 90 degrees!

Boys being weird

Then we closed out the night with Swedish glögg - it's a spiced wine that you drink warmed up. We had it with delicatoboll (a coconut-y, chocolate truffle-y type dessert, which was super tasty!) and gifflar, which were like little cinnamon roll bites. We also had some of Toby's Brazilian chocolates.