19 August 2011

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Stephanie, Tux, Samantha and Neil decide to go into Sydney early and visit Chinatown and Paddy’s Market amongst other things.

Eryl and Michael have a lie in before we go into Sydney around 10.30 via taxi. We intend taking the monorail trip on a circuit prior to lunch onboard ship. Its raining quite heavily so we are glad of the dry train. Unfortunately its not easy to take pictures out of the window due to advertising on the windows. As we approach the Paddy’s Market stop I say wouldn’t it be a coincidence if the others got on and what do you know, there they were! We all then take the monorail round to the Darling Harbour stop where we originally got on. It took about 20 minutes to do the full circuit.

We’d previously noticed that there was a Lindt Chocolate shop/café so as we still had some time before needing to board, we went in there and bought some! In pouring rain we boarded the boat for our lunchtime cruise around the harbour, which left at 12.15. Just before leaving, the buffet opened and there was plenty to chose from. The cruise went out and under the bridge before docking at Circular Quay for a few additional people to get onboard. It then toured up one side of the harbour before coming back down the other side. It didn’t go that far out though, not even getting as far as Watsons Bay. Tux produced a bottle of Rose bubbly and Eryl got very excited that he had some news – but he didn’t! It returned to dock around 2 hours later and throughout the trip it was raining. We could have stayed on for a further 2 hours but this seemed pointless as it was doing exactly the same trip but without the buffet.

Samantha and Neil went off on their own, possibly to travel out to the Sydney Cricket Ground. The rest of us decided to try and walk up the lookout on the bridge. We took the ferry round to Circular Quay and decided to walk along the Rocks to the base of the tower to find the entrance. Sadly we found that there was no entrance here so had to walk back to find the stairs to climb up 100 feet up to road level. We then walked along to the tower where a lengthy debate was had about whether we could all walk up the 200 steps to the observation deck. In the end we all decided to have a go. The view was good from the top and we could very clearly see people doing the bridge walk to the top of the arch. On returning to street level we then had to walk across the bridge to North Sydney and where we were staying.

We picked up some bottles of wine to take to Simon’s, along with the Aussie jam and Maldon Sea Salt I’d already bought.

For about an hour prior to leaving to catch the train the heavens really opened and we delayed our walk to the station. All seemed OK until we were about 100yard from the station, when the heavens opened again and we all made a dash for it. I rang Simon while we were on our way and a very wet Simon was waiting for us at the station. He and his eldest daughter Lisa drove us to their house.

We were greeted not only by Smon’s large family but also by some friends of theirs. We started off with Oysters and a large range of Sushi, followed by a choice of 3 main courses that his wife Yoko had cooked, followed by some cakes and a home made pavlova. This was all washed down by large quantities of red wine. Since I’d last been there, he had added a large gym to the house and had just had his tennis court relayed with artificial grass. Unfortunately I didn’t remember to take a look at his extensive wine cellar.

Around midnight Yoko and Lia gave us a lift to the station to catch a train back.

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