Would you believe I had not been on the internet long enough to type a blog?? Well, it’s sorta true.. I was on the internet while at work but I never had a block of time that I could just sit and type till now.. When is now? On the plane from Sydney to SF..
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Lets hop in our Delorian, fire up the flux capacitor and bring us back to Monday evening..
Class went a bit longer than I wanted on Monday so by the time I got back to the hotel is was already late. Me and Jessie decided to go upstairs to the executive room and get a drink and some appetizers while we figured out plans for the night. Plus side to the executive room is that we could both use the internet because they had free wireless upstairs and only one wired in the room. First of all, while on the subject of appetizers let me just say that in most other countries they don’t call them appetizers, they call them “entrees” and they call the main course the “main”. At first this seemed odd to me because we are so used to calling our main dish the entrée but it makes more sense to call the first course the entrée and the main course the main course because after all that is what it is… Anyway, back to the story… We ended up eating lots of cheese and bread and having a few glasses of wine while we decided what we wanted to do. If you’ve been looking at Flickr you will have noticed a bunch of pictures from the Aquarium so it’s pretty obvious where this story is going, but we found out that the Aquarium didn’t close till 10pm so we jumped on the ferry and headed over.
The Ferry ride was nice, it was raining but I stood outside at the very front of the boat taking wonderful pictures and seeing the beautiful skyline all lit up. Jessie sat inside by a window and every time the ferry would stop I would run over to her window and give her a little kiss.. It was like a drive up kissing window.. :D
The Aquarium was really cool actually, I’ve been to a bunch of them in the past but it was nice to see the different creatures they have on the southern hemisphere. One of the really cool things was they had Dugongs which are the original “mermaid”, they say that ship hands used to see them in the water and think they were seeing mermaids. I have a few pictures of them and you can clearly see they don’t look like mermaids, well maybe the tail does.. They however amazing looking creatures and they were feeding them massive amounts of lettuce which was cool to watch them eat. They had a walk above them so you could look down into the water and they had one of those glass tunnels you could walk through too so you could see them from the in the water angle. Speaking of in the in the water angle, they had a shark walk too – big deal everyone does now right, but they also had a coral reef exhibit and they had a glass walkway there too. That one was super cool because it not only had a glass ceiling and walls but a glass floor, it was very relaxing to stand there completely surrounded by fish.
We purchased a two park pass which included the Wildlife Park, when I scanned my ticket at the Aquarium it said it was an invalid ticket type for Mondays which was stupid because I had just purchased it. Ironically it didn’t scan correctly at the Wildlife Park either so I ended up giving to Ange to use at both places as long as she uses it before 30 days is up.
After the Aquarium we went to City Extra which is a 24 hour restaurant that serves decent food. I had the fish and chips snack again (see pervious blogs) and Jessie had Potato Wedges which she says were “eh”.
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Nothing left to see on Monday so.. Onto Tuesday Marty… Tuesday was not at all what it was supposed to be.. Jessie made last minute plans to hang out with Nigel who we met at the Poly meet up on Sunday. I got out of work and went to Scruffy Murphy’s which is a really big Irish pub in Sydney. Someone from Ireland should come there and show them how to be an “Irish Pub”, the only thing that made them an “Irish Pub” was the name and the Guinness. They had techno dance music on and Cricket on the TV, they had slot machines in the back and served regular pub fare for food. I’ve felt more in Ireland at “Irish Pubs” in America. I had a Guinness and then went shopping to kill more time till Ange got out of work. Me and Ange went to a Korean restaurant and had some really good food, she played me some Australian music by her friend but I forgot to get a copy of it. Maybe she can rip it and mail me a MP3 CD of them and George (who she played for us on Thursday). The house Ange lives in does not have heat which is an odd concept for us Americans, it also has really, really high doorknobs. The doorknobs are at face level which is really odd when you’re half asleep looking to open a door.. A few of the doors and windows have this odd creature on the stained glass, I posted (or will post) a pic of it on my flickr site, check it out and let me know what you think it looks like.. :D
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Wednesday.. Ange dropped me off at the train and I got to work a little late, stupid trains.. Ironically I found an awesome way to get to work on Wednesday night for Thursday, there is an express train that runs from Central to Epping and only stops twice on the way. I wish I had seen that in the beginning of my trip… /sigh…
Anyway, after work I went over to Ange’s house. We had planned to get together on Wednesday and ended up having Tuesday and Wednesday because of Jessie’s impromptu plans with Nigel on Tuesday. That night Ange took me to an Italian restaurant that she apparently takes all her dates to, I felt a little “on display” with the waitresses and waiters sizing me up. One waitress actually (not so smoothly) walked by, put a tray down and turned to take a long sizing up glance at me.. I had a great eye fillet with mushroom gravy and Ange had a chicken dish. I’m having a brain cramp as to what type of chicken it was, I know she was going to get the Chicken “in-pajamas” (parmesan), the “in-pajamas” thing came from a commercial they used to air in Australia. I’ve obviously never seen it but it was pretty cute when she was describing it. After dinner we went back to her place and I played her a bunch of music on my iPod before heading to bed. One other thing about her house, she has a four poster bed with almost see through white cloth hanging from it that you can let down to have it make a little sanctuary. Me and Jessie have always talked about wanting a four poster like this and I have to say it was really nice. I think it would be too big for our bedroom with the bed we have but it maybe something to look into.
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Thursday Ange dropped me off and for the first time I took the express train which worked out really well. I got to class just before 9am but didn’t leave her house till almost 8. The day before we left her house at 7:30 and I didn’t get to work till about 9:15.. Thursday was the last day so I got out early and headed back to the hotel, when I got out I texted Jessie and she was just at the hotel so she decided to wait for me before heading out. We had a really good time at the hotel before heading out to the Wildlife Park. That place was awesome! I’ve never seen a Koala bear actually awake! Every zoo I’ve ever been to that has had Koalas had a habitat that they said they were in but I never saw one other than maybe one asleep way up in a tree. This place had them out in the open air with you, they even had a spot where you could pay to pet one and have your picture taken with one. We didn’t pay but we did get to see them really close up, they are such cute animals. Speaking of cute animals, we also saw a sugar glider and these rabbit eared bandicoots that looked like Mieu (the cat from Phantasy Star I). Also on the cute scale, but not on the same level, I finally saw a real Kangaroo, they had a bunch of them in this prairie and they were really cool looking. We also rock wallabies and an overgrown guinea pig looking creature that was running around like crazy, there was a lady from Australia who told us it was the most active wombat she had ever seen.
After the Wildlife Park the food frustration struck.. Jessie had looked up an Indian restaurant she really wanted to eat at and a micro-brew house that looked cool. We decided we would eat an early dinner at the Indian place and then do late night entrees at the brew-house. So, we went to the Indian place and found they closed from 2:30pm till 6:00pm, since it was only 4:30 we decided to do the reverse, go get entrees and beer at the brew-house and then come back for a later dinner. We walk all the way to the stupid brew-house to find them closed for a private function!! ARGH! So…. We decided to head back to the Indian place and kill some time in the mall shopping till they opened. Got some really cool stuff including a drizabone hat and a wool liner for my duster. We got to the Indian place a few minutes after six and Jessie got some really spicy lamb chops and I got goat curry. It was the first time I had goat and it was good, the lamb was very good as well and I would say it was bordering on what I would call too hot. We also had a mushroom naan which was very good. After we ate we started to head back and it started to pour! It rained so much we ended up jumping in a cab to go back to the hotel and we left puddles in the taxi! Unfortunately in order to get a taxi we had to first walk across the Harbourside Bridge and I walked through a puddle that no shit came half way up my shin!
Got changed at hotel and I grabbed my duster before heading back out to the brew-house. We met Ange there and had a few beers, it was the first brew-house I’ve ever been to where non of the beers were good. Just so you never accidentally go there, it was called Red Oak brew-house and it was BAD, I really can’t stress that fact.. I tried three different beers and Jessie tried three and they were all bad. I had the Christmas Cheer which looked great on paper, the Irish Red and the Honey Ale. Jessie had the St Nicholas which was an unfiltered Belgium ale, a blackberry wheat and the chocolate stout. We left there and went back to City Extra to have some late night snacks and some good beer. Me and Ange split scones and Jessie had banana crepes, I also had a James Squire Amber to make up for the bad beer I had earlier in the night.
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Well, I guess is the end of this blog… My battery is about to die so I’m going to save this before it’s too late.. I am hoping to post this while in SF so everyone can read it while I’m in the air to Boston…
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Uploaded pics to flickr from the last day or so.. :D
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