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Even though I've already begun a blog on a simliar site, I've decided to relocate as this is user friendly and I guess it pays homage to the fact that STA is the birthplace of my travelling journey!
For those of you who don't know, you'd probably wrongly assume I was travelling on my lonesome hence, Travels with Chloe. But no, I am sharing this fantastic journey with my boyfriend Gary.
He isn't what you'd call a typical blogger, he'd much rather pass on his experiences through word of mouth so he's leaving me to my own devices and keeping his travels under wraps.
Gary's been here a week, five days of which the weather was absolutely atrocious. Rain, rain and more rain! At least this gave him chance to beat the jet-lag and no chance of him getting homesick too soon.
With the weekend arriving, so did the sunshine. This was fortunate for us as I had booked a rather swanky hotel and table at an up and coming Tapas restaurant in Darlinghurst. (http://www.8hotels.com/kirk/hotel-information/kirketon-hotel-home.html http://www.lotforty.com/)
Darlinghurst could be summarised only by the quote that it reminded me of:
"Adventure is a path. Real adventure - self-determined, self-motivated, often risky - forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind - and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white."
-Mark Jenkins-
As we exited Kings Cross station, my initial thoughts were Oh My Days. Firstly at our surroundings, as the buildings were slightly dilapidated and it could have been mistaken for a street in Amsterdam as there were more 'Adult Shops' than you could shake a stick at (excuse the pun). Lastly, at the characters which resided by the station. Several aborigine women drinking alcohol and acting aggressively towards one another. You were also hard pushed to ignore the putrid stench coming from the gutter. So... we headed away from the station as I continued to worry about what the hotel was like or if it even existed!
As we walked further away from the station, both looking typically like tourists donning our Karrimor's on our backs, we passed a place that looked pretty nice and expensive. As luck would have it, it was the hotel. Fear not, inside was as nice as outside and it didn't dissatisfy. It was a short walk to the Tapas restaurant which seemed to be a converted, contemporary unit and the waiter seated us outside at a lovely "rustic table" as Gary so nicely put it! We attempted to get through four dishes, which usually would be managed with no problems, however, due to the Nacho's and delicious pancakes we devoured earlier on at http://www.pancakesontherocks.com.au/home it seemed to be a mean feat!
The following day we headed for breakfast at http://www.tigerbakers.com/about.html which as the website suggests was slightly bohemian and both went for the traditional poached egg on toast. Gary reckoned the dish presented was five star however, the taste of his homemade poached egg tasted five star. I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise, so we both enjoyed our breakfasts.
As we headed back to Kings Cross station it seemed to be the city that never slept as there were a number of lady's of the night (in this case, the day) at work and our thoughts were with a young lady, about our age, sat at the entrance of the station, looking slightly worse for wear. That's to put it nicely.
It really did bother me seeing the girl sat at the station and whilst sat on the train a number of thoughts crossed my mind. One was how lucky we are to be so fortunate to experience our round the world adventure and another was why is no one bothered that she's there? Where is her family? Does she have any and if so do they think she's on some amazing adventure? Nonetheless, it hit home that not everybody chooses to be where they are in life. Perhaps she never had the same fortunate opportunities I have had. Perhaps she did make a choice, the wrong one and now she's sat outside Kings Cross station with track marks in her arm and I'm here. It's a scary world. But we're all people, we all breathe air, we all eat and we all get rid of waste. It's just some are luckier than others.
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