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First up, we were both woken at 4am by the Sydney garbage men. We may be out of the RV phase of this trip, but we have immediately found a new, and entirely differnt way of disrupting our night's sleep!
Arising properly at about 9.00, we're greeted by Jaypee (Stacey's boyfriend) who is working from home today. He offers us a lift to the rail station, but of course we decline, because we're British and unnecessarily polite.
Travelling from Carlton station to Central station takes just 30 mins. It's also really nice to return to a spot that we find so familiar (this is the place where our first youth hostel was back in early November!), and we easily navigate our way to China Town without the need for Mr Google.
Entering the Market City complex, a China Town shopping mall, we meet up with our friend Theo from Durham, and his Sydneysider friend for dim sum at 'The Eight'. Meeting up with Theo was a very late addition to our plans, but a couple of days ago Theo rather randomly got in touch with us to let us know that he had just left Beijing, and was now undertaking a tour of South East Asia. His first stop was Australia, and as such, got in touch. Small world!
So rather surreally, we proceeded to a have mini life catch up, in a Dim Sum restaurant, in Sydney. Unsurprisingly, we predominately talked about China, and Theo's previous job in the British Embassy in Beijing. We were both interested to hear of Theo's positive impression of China (still from a British point of view), and only fleetingly reminisced collectively about Durham, if at all!
Saying farewell to Theo and his friend Joanna, we learnt that he was to be in Melbourne around the same time we will be. Perhaps another catch up is on the cards?
After food, we checked out the 6m x 8m human snow globe on display in the Market City foyer. Al Bal was quite excited about this. I was less so. However, once inside, the fake snow made for excellent 'snow' ball fights. We may have enjoyed ourselves more than the children...?
Next was the serious business of the day - to prepare our Christmas present to Alex's Australian / Polish family. This is important because i) we are to spend the entirety of Christmas Day with them, and ii) rather unexpectedly, and very generously, they have paid for a hotel room for us over the Christmas period. A hotel that overlooks Coogee beach! Our chosen present is to be a reprint photo album of old pictures that they may not have ever seen of the extended Polish family.
Quickly identifying the place to do our photo printing, we then severely struggle to get the pictures into the right format. This costs us several hours in a terrible coffee shop. Microsoft really do make these things deliberately difficult when they want to!
Finally sorting out our technical issues (how many IT consultants does it take...?), we triumph with a lovely little photo album. Success!
Intent of now getting our xmas fix (as it REALLY does not feel like Christmas to us yet), Alice spotted a 'flash xmas carol mob' on Facebook. We decide to participate! To those who are unaware what a 'flash mob' is... it is a group of people who do not know each other, who have seen a request go out on social media to assemble, who then assemble at short notice to partake in any number of group activities.
And in this case, this was carol singing. How cool are we??
Anyway, we join the motley group of absolute strangers outside the impressive Sydney Customs House, and lead the line like absolute heroes.
Full of Christmas cheer, we wander quickly in to Customs House to find some exhibits and some newspapers, then have a cheap(ish) dinner at nearby Martins Place, ahead of checking out the festive light show on various Sydney Governmental buildings. There was a xmas robot city on a strange circular building (nope, no idea what it was), and a very impressive 2 minute show projected onto the very grand Sydney City Hall, a building we had seen back in November when we stood in the rain for a good hour on Remembrance Day. The light show was a little like the Lumiere in Durham. And if that means nothing to you, just google it! We wonder why London doesn't do this also?
Now quite tired from all the city street walking (it's been while, and we decided to do today in flip flops), we walk through the Pitt Street mall, under some 1,000 lights, and board a train to our temporary home in Carlton.
We're very glad to be back in a real bed for the second night running, that's for sure.
AF
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