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Can you believe that we've been away nearly 5 months?? Time is certainly flying by quickly for us! So much to do and so little time haha. What have we been up to I hear you asking? With us both working full-time we luckily have managed to always get Sundays off which we have spent sightseeing and enjoying Sydney life and my god have we had some awesome Sundays lately :)
We paid a visit to The Rocks market to order some amazing Aboriginal artwork on canvas. We got two beautiful paintings one of a penguin (surprise surprise) and the other of the Sydney Opera House! They didn't have the sizes we wanted so ordered them to pick up next weekend. With it being such a lovely afternoon we decided to pay the Sydney Botanical Gardens a visit. The Botanical Gardens is absolutely amazing! Right by Circular Quay we walked through one of the entrances by the Opera House. It was very relaxing and peaceful walking around surrounded by the many species of trees and birds around as well! The gardens is massive with amazing views of the Operas House and out onto the water, with separate sections such as such as the Palm Tree forest, which lived various species of Palm Tree and South East Asia gardens, complete with an oriental styled pond with fishies! Jen was particularly pleased to see a Moray Eel (not) but she was excited by the Cormorants!! We came across an area full of life with White cockatoos! Their feathers were a brilliant white and they seemed very curious birds, with yellow mohicans. They were constantly flying around onto people enjoying the attention they were getting. I managed to entice one on my arm, Jen was more amused at the next one which landed on my neck and started checking my hair for food or nits! After spending some time watching these amazing birds, taking lots of photos and watching the sunset down behind the Opera House we set out to Darling Harbour in search of food :) On our walk over to the Darling Harbour we had already decided to spend the evening at Hard Rock Cafe yay :) We got a lovely table by the window looking over the harbour and enjoyed our burgers and cocktails!! I got a (boring apparently) Long Island Ice Tea while Jen got a Blue Devil a funkier slushie with raspberry blue lagoon twist. By this time we were pretty starving and we drooled over each meal that passed by until ours came. After we had demolished our yummy meals we headed back towards Circular Quay to meet up with Mark and Alicia and enjoyed $4 pints $1 pool and unlimited songs on the jukebox. Ended up a rather late night for a school night!!
The following Sunday we went down to the beach to pay the whale festival a visit! Celebrating the annual migration of whales, there was a giant life-size inflated whale on the promenade and also a stall handing out information on whales and locations in Bondi and Sydney were Humpback whales had been spotted passing by. It was another beautiful day strolling with our gelatos yum yum along the beach, enjoying the great view. However, we had to head back into the city as we needed to pick up our amazing paintings! We got the bus back in and got our gorgeous artwork :) Deciding to get some food we decided to take the walk from Circular Quay towards Darling Harbour. There was some beautiful views of the bridge and the harbour as the sun was setting slowly while we were walking. When we got to Darling Harbour we decided to pay Tony Roma's a visit. If you have never been (was my first time) then I would highly recommend it! All you can eat ribs, tender, juicy and deliciously basted in their BBQ sauce, it is extremely delicious :) Jen has also mentioned numerous times about the fantastic onion loaf although we got unlucky and they were completely sold out! Although this does give us an excuse to go again haha.
Sunday after we were supposed to go down to the Beach for the Bondi the Beautiful fair which was to promote environmental efforts to Bondi area Jen was suppose to be helping out as the wildlife group in which she is now a member of WIRES had a stall. Unfortunately, Jen was poorly so we had a very lazy morning in bed. Which wasn't the worst thing to have an extra long lie in haha. By the afternoon Jen was feeling slightly better :) so I treated her to Kelly's Grill in Bondi Junction before seeing an advance screening of Ted. Kelly's has just opened and we have been wanting to go and check it out as it always smells so good, Jen got a superb looking chicken burger while I opted for a rump steak. Now being me, I thought I'd get the large steak which was 700g. Yes I know now that it is probably way too big a steak for any one but in my defence I was very hungry haha. The food came and the steak was gigantic, I don't think either of us have seen such a big steak before haha. We throoughly enjoyed our meal and TED was good laugh, same Big Bun cant walk and talk.
The next weekend we woke up early and wandered to a Brazilian cafe down the road for breaky :) Afterwards we headed home to try out the bikes we got free from our neighbours when they left. The bikes were in need of a bit of TLC but we bought a pump for the flat tires and also had some work with the chains and getting it all running again. Eventually we got the bikes fit and ready to only find after cycling for seconds up the road, that Jen's bike tyres were not just in need of pumping up but were indeed punctured :( With this setback we decided to head down to the Beach were the Winter Festival was on with an ice rink on the beach and good atmosphere, we enjoyed a cheeky happy hour drink on the balcony of one of the bars by the beach called Bondi Social looking out onto the sunset over the beach. Followed by another sneaking bevy with Mark and Alicia who later joined us as we were planning on going ice skating together, but unfortunately we hit busy timing and the times were booked out until later in the evening when we didn't want to go as it would have been dark. Jen and I decided to then have an Indian take-away feast with some Ace Ventura laughs back at home.
Jen now working slightly different shifts now get Saturday mornings off until 3pm so we thought we should start being pro-active and make the most of our time off together. So the next Saturday we were determined to go ice skating at this was the last weekend it was on, we headed down nice and early and bought our tickets for 12am, enjoying a McDonalds breakie picnic in the grass overlooking Bondi beach. We had some time between our picnic and skating to we had a walk up North Bondi along the cliffs and enjoyed the amazing views before finally ice skating!!!The ice rink area was set up beautifully on the sand, the ice rink was next to 'Alpine Hut' where they set up a bar and you can get food, alcohol and hot chocolate! There was also a sand area with mini Christmas trees and also little huts around selling different food and drink. There was also a Lipton Chai Tea hut right by the rink where you can sit in and enjoy a free chai tea while watching people skate by. We got our skates, lovely bright orange boots and headed onto the ice. With it being open-air ice rink on the beach in Australia the ice wasn't doing so well, there were massive puddles covering the rink and when people fell down my god they got soaked. Within our first steps onto the ice, we could feel there was a problem as we were like Bambi, we had no grip whatsoever. It did not seem to be an isolated problem as people all around us seemed to be having the same problem! Thus began a very long walk pulling ourselves along so we could get out and get our skates sharpened which we did but took up ¾ of our skating time but luckily they were nice enough to allow us onto the next 45 minute sessions. In-between the sessions we enjoyed our free chai latte and ice hockey team play :) although the splashes from the ice hockey game were rather cold! With our skates newly sharpened and 45 mins to play we really enjoyed our second chance, was so amazing to be ice skating looking onto a beach and the ocean, was very hot though.
On the Sunday we were up bright and early (again haha) because we were booked in to Level Fourteen at the American Club for a high tea. The club was situated right next to the Botanical gardens and although we didn't get a table next to the windows we managed to get a lovely view. We started off with a glass of bubbly each and then the food came. It was absolutely delicious, we had tasty little sandwiches, savoury bites then we had the most amazing lemonade scones and yummy desserts! It was all absolutely delicious and finished off with funky teas, I had gunpowder green tea whilst Jen had Red fancy fruit. After this we decided to tick another thing off our list and do the Opera House tour. We were amazed during and after the tour at the ingenuity inside the different theatres, the stunning architecture of the Opera House and the beauty both inside and outside. It was a bit sad hearing about the story of the architect who dreamed up the design, Jonas Utzon. The Opera House was originally thought to take 3 years and $7 million to build. However with spiralling costs and increased build time, coupled with a new government, Utzon was forced to resign from the project. The Opera House was finished, after he left the country, 16 years later and although he was re-engaged to design the Utzon room for the Opera House in the late 1990's, Utzon never saw the Opera House in person, preferring to work in his native Denmark and sending the plans over. After the tour we headed to the Opera Bar for a drink to watch the sun setting on the Opera House. We headed to Darling Harbour again to have some food, although we passed many restaurants, even going into one then coming back out as we weren't too comfortable in there, we eventually went to Hard Rock again. After another delicious meal and cocktails we headed home with our very full and happy bellies.
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