So the sad day has come. Jelly Bean has to return to the UK, and today is the day. Last breakfast, bits of packing, adjusting, reminiscing, and off to the airport. The train only takes 25 minutes and drops you off inside the terminal, so it is pretty easy to get going. We checked her bags in and then went for a quick bite of airport food, after which she walked off down the corridor to security, and that was that 🙁

What a great time we had though – an unforgettable visit, in a fantastic country. Marvellous indeed.

Although I have been living in Sydney for 3 months, and my suite overlooks the monorail, I haven’t actually been on it before. I was waiting for the right moment I guess, which was now. We walked down to the monorail station, bought tickets and waited for the next train. Built (as with much of Sydney) for the Olympics), it actually covers a small area of downtown, covering the Darling Harbour, Chinatown and the Queen Victoria building. We hopped aboard, and did a full loop first, which covered about 12 minutes at the most. 2nd time around we got off at Paddy’s Market and went in to do battle and hunt for bargains. A bit of last minute shopping for some gifts was called for, apparently. We bought half of China town, then went to but some emperors puff balls – a custard doughnut type thingy, hot and fresh off the press, and urgently delicious in a way that cant be described.

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We took our spoils of war back to the hotel, then walked down to the wharf and got a ferry around to CQ, when we walked around to the Rocks. Apparently we hadn’t shopped enough, so with a quick stop for some delicious market food, we entered the shopping frenzy once more and got rid of more excess cash, exchanging this with the natives for trinkets, baubles, earrings and the like.

W nice walk back up through town brought us back to the Sydney Tower. Our tickets for the aquarium included entry to the tower, so up we went for a daytime viewing. Again, superbly spectacular. It was later in the afternoon, so we decided to hang around, have a nice coffee and a crap cheese cake, and watch the sunset. It were bloody marvellous.

Finally walked back to the hotel, and then down into darling harbour for a ‘last night in Sydney’ meal for gorgeous steak. Somehow, food seemed to feature quite a lot in our holiday.

Friday and we decided to take it a bit easier today. Being a tourist can be tiring, and we were ready for a relaxing day. We got the train a few stops out of the centre to a suburb called Newtown. Newtown is a combination of bohemian boutiques, new age shops, second-hand book stores, and about 300 Thai restaurants. The shopping area is based a long and winding high street, called King Street.
There were a lot of unusual clothing shops – many seem to be run by the designers themselves, and a lot of alternative fashions. Even though I am allergic to shopping, it was refreshing not to see the standard uniforms that all shops in the UK offer.
We wandered up and down for ages, and had a nice Lebanese wrap for lunch. More walking, somewhat lost, through a bunch more neighbourhoods, and finally a train back to somewhere recognisable.
In the evening, we went to a restaurant/cinema called Govindas. Veggie curry buffet of very delicious Indian food, served by 2 German waitresses in Saris. Bit surreal, but I have experienced worse. After dinner, you go upstairs, lie down on large, comfy mattresses with big pillows, kick off your shoes, and watch a movie on a decent sized screen. How marvellous – though I think that the combination of a movie, meal and mattresses might be too much for some – I am sure I heard snores.
We watched Inception, which was interesting and entertaining, then got the train back from Kings Cross and crawled into our bed.

Night Night x

Borrowed bikes and are riding around Manly today. Been up to north head which was beautiful, now about to try and not share our fish and chips with 80 seagulls.

I had to go into work today, which meant that Lena was free to roam the city like a big girl, all on her own. She did various bits of strolling and ferry-ing, and managed not to spend half the Gross National Product of Peru on shiny things. In the evening we met up with a bunch from work – we had a bunch of folk over from Microsoft in Seattle, plus a fair few of us English based types, so in the interests of keep the theme broadly international, and given that we were in Sydney, we went to a Greek Restaurant.

A lot of fun, food, frolics and a fair bit of alky-hol was had by all. I have video of folk dancing on tables and smashing plates while doing manly dances around the restaurant – but these have been filed with my lawyer and will be used in case I need to blackmail someone in the future. Anyway – a good evening, and more memories to add to the alarmingly large pile

We got back to Circular Quay after our day at the Blue Moontns, and had a couple of hours to kill until the show that we had booked to see at the Opera House. One of the worlds most iconic pieces of architecture, the Opera House dominates the bay and Central Quay, and has to be seen to be believed. When we knew that Lena was coming to Sydney, she booked us tickets to see a show. Called Night and Day, it was a modern dance and music performance. This is not the kind of thing I would normally go see, but an opportunity to see a show at the Opera House was too tempting to miss. We had some food, then went over to the Opera House to get in to see the show.

The building inside is pretty spectacular too, with a number of theatres, halls, venues and other rooms. We were in the Drama Theatre, which was comfortable and relatively smaller (probably only a few hundred seats) auditorium, with a very modern feel to it.

I can’t really describe the show, because I can’t really comment intelligently on modern dance. Let’s just say that it was interesting (in some parts), and leave it at that. Still very glad to have gone to the Opera House though. We headed back on the train – only one stop but we were tired – and collapsed into a heap on our hotel room. In all a very memorable day.