Alarms, Zorro and a flight to lunch

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We didn’t get the peaceful, uninterrupted night’s sleep that our bodies were desperately in need of. About 1.30am, Fi woke me up saying that an alarm was going off in the room. I sat up and tried to wake up, without much success. I checked the interactive, touch screen phone that controls everything in the room to see if I’d accidentally set the alarm - no.

I checked my phone alarm - no. I even checked my PC, to no avail. I dialled 0 to get someone to tell me how to switch it off - no answer.

Fi said she could hear voices, but I couldn’t, so I stuck my head into the corridor just as the volume of the alarm increased and changed to “EMERGENCY, EVACUATE, EMERGENCY EVACUATE.”

We threw on the first clothes that came to hand and stumbled quickly down the nearest fire escape, kicked open the bottom door and ran out into an unlit, back alley.

We wandered around the corner to see other people emerging from the hotel, some dressed, some in bathrobes and strangely, one man dressed as Zorro.

Next up, the New South Wales fire brigade arrived, had a quick look around and told everyone to go back to bed.

We woke up the second time at the right hour of 9am, as Fi had a surprise to look forward to. We eventually managed to hail a taxi and headed off to Rose Bay to take a seaplane up the coast to have lunch at Cottage Point restaurant. The restaurant sits on a bend of the Hawksbury River, about 20 minutes flying time north of Sydney.

The flight was excellent, the weather was good and we didn’t get too much turbulence. Steve our pilot brought the seaplane into land and we glided up to the jetty where a waiter was standing ready to guide us to our table.

The view was as good as I remember it when we visited seven years ago and so was the food. The same kookaburra we saw seven years ago put in an appearance - according to the staff he’s 11 years old.

We got talking to a local Australian couple who lived nearby, we got on so well that they even offered Fi an IT job!

Thee o’clock rolled around far too quickly for our liking and the seaplane arrived to fly us back. On the flight back I got to sit in the co-pilots seat and pretend I was flying, it was like being 12 again!

We did a circuit over the harbour bridge and opera house and before landing back in Rose Bay. We thanked Steve (who incidentally did all the seaplane scenes in Superman Returns) and got a taxi back to the hotel.

In the evening, we went down to Darling Harbour for a drink and ended up in a bar called Loft, which to be honest, was very noisy and full of drunken office Christmas parties.

We ended up in the Rocks and a great restaurant called Sailors Thai. We had a fantastic red thai curry and salmon marinaded in lime.

As we headed back to the hotel, we stopped to watch some Brazilian samba dancers and had our first dance on the quay overlooking the opera house.

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Photos

The seaplane takes off
The seaplane we took from Rose Bay in Sydney to Cottage Point on the Hawksbury River

South Head
Flying over South Head with Sydney in the background

Landing at Cottage Point
The seaplane cruising into the restaurant on the Hawksbury River