A Lovely Day Down Under!

G’day, Folks! By popular demand (and you know who you are, Katy and Robert…) I will make every attempt to put in paragraph breaks … the only problem is that my blogging is really more of a random walk … no clear breaks of thought, just total and complete babbling! But…in the interests of my gentle readers of a “certain age” I will at least try … like now … otherwise, possibly I should just write four or five sentences and then make a break!! (Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, and read yesterday’s picture-less blog, we’ve now gone back and posted some pictures FYI!)

So…today, November 1. We are staying on the Executive Floor of the Swissotel, and that means free breakfast in the morning and free drinks and canapés in the afternoon! The breakfast was good – eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, fried rice (!), cheese (Swiss…what other kind is there?), salami and fruit. That’s what we ate …there was also the ubiquitous Swiss pink muesli, a variety of cereals, juices, milk, croissants and pastries … and yes, we did manage to fill up!

Then, we were out and about! Our first stop was a walk to the Royal Botanic Garden to see how well they are coming along with their plan to relocate the flying foxes … answer? Not well, because there were hundreds if not thousands still there! Because we were so early (round about 7:30-ish) the foxes were still flying in and getting settled in the trees for their daily nap. One of the pictures above shows one of the trees – each of what looks like little sacks is actually a flying fox! They’re WONDERFUL! Especially flying in – but our little digital camera just isn’t fast enough to catch one, but we did manage lots of plain blue sky pictures! Which is the main reason R is going to get a new digital camera for Christmas!!!

From there we headed toward the harbour, and a walk past the Opera House and to Circular Quay. We had purchased an all-day metro/bus/ferry pass and got on the first boat we saw that was ready to pull out. The poor guy who was working the gang-plank asked us where we were headed – not sure he liked our answer of “anywhere! It doesn’t matter!” And, as a matter of fact, we had a lovely ride – under the Harbour Bridge and past Darling Harbour, through Homebush Bay (home of Sydney’s Olympic Park) and almost all the way to Parramatta. For a lot of the time we had the entire front deck to ourselves, which was wonderful. Lovely warm day, lots of blue sky and sunshine, with enough clouds to make things interesting. The forecast said it was only going to get to about 70 degrees, but we are certain it got higher than that – we were figuring low 80’s! At any rate, it was lovely! Took about 2 hours, and we got back to Circular Quay around 11:15…just in time to catch the 11:30 ferry to Manly, one of our very favorite places!

Manly is on a northern peninsula, with water on both sides – one side the harbour, the other the ocean. We walked through the ferry terminal and out on to the Corso, Manly’s pedestrian-only main street. From there we took the beach walk along Marine Parade to one of our favorite restaurants, Kiosk, for lunch. We had a front-row table, overlooking the walk; beautiful views in several directions! For lunch, we decided to order four starters (seems that in OZ, the terms are entrees and mains…so we had four entrees.) The first batch included an amazing fried zucchini blossom stuffed with fresh goat curd, on a bed of really fresh peas and asparagus; just fabulous. Entree number two was a plate of very fresh prosciutto (is that an oxymoron??) with VERY fresh mozzarella and basil; yummy! That was followed by round 2 – prawn-filled tortellini with fresh prawns; good, and finally, scallops in a puff pastry with saffron and tarragon – outstanding! Just enough to split easily, and absolutely NO leftovers! Finally, I had dessert – a double chocolate tart with homemade vanilla/coffee ice cream – I don’t like coffee at all, but it was very faint, and had the benefit of crumbled oreos on top! Also chocolate truffles…just to help clear the palate! That, along with a lovely bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, made for an incredible meal! Have to say, the wines here are really superb!

The only problem with having a lovely meal like this is that we had to walk back to the ferry boat … slowly, believe me! Caught the next ferry back to Circular Quay – very much in need of a nap by this time; it was after 4 p.m. by the time we got back to the hotel! Slept for an hour or so, and this time, was able to wake up to take advantage of our hotel’s wine and canapés offer! Lovely wines, great canapés – cheese and crackers, lots of fresh (is there any other kind?) sushi, as well as chicken satay skewers with a very spicy sauce. Had a nice sit-down around some glasses of wine, and basically made dinner out of the canapés! Then out for yet another jaunt around Sydney; can’t believe we have to leave tomorrow!

Our hotel is just half a block from the monorail stop, so we grabbed the monorail and road clear around the circuit before finally getting off at Darling Habour. Walked around the shopping center, looking at Australiana and t-shirts, but didn’t find anything we had to have. Back to the hotel for a lovely bath – WAY too many bubbles … and a catch-up on emails. Found that the maid had been in our room, and left – surprise! Toblerone! Will this Swissness ever end??

So, on that note, off to bed! R sleeping soundly … question will be if I can somehow download the photos without waking him up! Oh well!!

Take care everybody, and here’s hoping that the paragraph breaks work well!

Love,

m