A ROYAL RETURN TO SYDNEY
Trip Start
Mar 15, 2011
1
22
35
Trip End
Jun 11, 2011
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Thursday, April 28, 2011
And so we chilled out there for a while, catching up on some emails and the like before grabbing a rather delicious lunch of teriyaki over the road. We had intended to spend the afternoon at Featherdale Wildlife Park - a little zoo where you can feed kangaroos - but we were being subjected to the most atrocious weather and felt that it would be little fun in the rain.
The decision was entirely validated later that evening. We had dinner with Erin's friends Anna and Andy who both informed us about the rather nasty smell of kangaroos in the rain! And I'm sure they wouldn't have wanted dinner guests who reeked of wet kangaroo either! Anna cooked us some incredibly delicious pork and it was a fabulous evening.
Friday was due to be packed. As we arose we saw the early stages of the redecoration of Jo's flat for the royal wedding and it was already looking terrifically festive. We then set off for our first destination of the day: the Sydney Aquarium. This is something we'd intentionally put off until school holidays had come to a close and since the day was once again rainy, it seemed the perfect time to check it out.
Along with seeing some of the weird and wonderful animals of the Australian waterways, like the platypus and the giant groper, we spent a great deal of time with the aquarium's specialty: sharks. We spent ages watching the shark tracking program, where you can see exactly where their tagged Great Whites play and move along the east coast of Australia, making it all look incredibly playful. Dodging the school excursion groups behind us, we also spent a good deal of time gazing at the sharks and rays from the underwater viewing tunnels before jumping on top of the water in our 'private tour' (there were no other takers at that time!) to chat to one of the keepers and feed the fish from a little metal boat.
With aquatic reconnaissance completed, we were due to meet Erin's buddies - Ange, Nicola and Sally - for lunch on the adjoining King Street Wharf. After grabbing a quick beer we settled in at Nick's for a long, delicious lunch with our view almost completely obliterated by the rain! In the aftermath of our meal we felt that a pedicure was in order. For some reason, Justyn abstained and wandered the shops while the girls disappeared for much needed foot therapy.
We returned to Jo's place in the early evening to help with the party set-up and she revealed her piece de resistance for the evening: huge portraits of varying royal family members with our heads photoshopped on to them. We were transplanted onto the bodies of Charles and Camilla, while our buddies were transformed into Wills & Kate, Princess Mary of Denmark and so on! The best was Jo's - since she was coming as the Queen, she was implanted into a portrait of Her Maj, and the likeness was uncanny!
There was little prompting needed to have us throw on our costumes from Lismore and we emerged as General Gaddafi (or perhaps another North African leader) and his consort. Justyn's kaftan was a particular hit, mainly because it managed to show a lot of leg!
Twas a brilliant party. Nicola provided awesome commentary on different aspects of the wedding, having read almost everything about it in the last few weeks - a task entirely fitting as she had come as Kate with her fiance Stephen opting for Wills' in a friend's pilot jumpsuit! The only hitch in the evening was the 'confetti incident of 2011' - discovering the next day that the colour from the confetti had leached into the carpet!
Not surprisingly, we took it easy the next morning and ventured out west for an afternoon farewell for Ange, who was due to head back to the UK later that weekend. She held a fabulous shindig at her parents' house, and with the goats in the backyard it provided ample entertainment for all of our buddies' little ones in tow on the day.
Sunday we headed out to Erin’s brother’s house for a delicious lasagne lunch before heading back into town for an afternoon catch-up with Jo and Mel. It seemed like such an excellent idea at the time. We met Mel around 20 mins walk from Jo’s house in order to all walk together to nearby Glebe which was a very civilised jaunt around the waterfront of the city’s inner west. Then we reached the AB Hotel. It was decided that we should have 'just one drink’, being a Sunday night and all. Well that turned into ‘why don’t we split a bottle of wine’ to ‘I’ll get the next round’. Several bottles of shiraz later, the girls were not in the best state! We moved on very late in the evening to the cocktail & tapas bar up the road… and then calling it a night in a rather merry state we wound up back at the kebab shop in the wee hours for Turkish pide. Definitely a quiet night. And totally suitable as a forerunner for an early morning get-up for a flight to South Australia for…wine tasting!!
