On invitation from the Pierrick we all got together and ventured to the ANZ Stadium for the Wallabies v France union match. On the back of France’s results in NZ expectations were high for a good match, however the French actually had one foot on the plane home and the game was quite one sided. We of course made fun of it all, and the pictures do tell part of the story: plenty of beer in our seats, tickles on the train, drunken pool and back to ours!
Wallabies v France
July 3rd, 2009Vivid Sydney
June 18th, 2009So as is the spirit in Sydney, another festival…in the past week we have attended two screenings at the Sydney Film Festival: The September Issue and at the closing night “An Education” – both were very good films indeed!
We also had a wander about town as part of the Vivid Festival – a light festival across town. Some of the pictures we got, we think, are amazing! Check out for yourself!
Queens Birthday
June 18th, 2009So in true aussie style….they celebrate the Queens birthday with a public holiday – splendid – a long weekend, what can we do?
We decided to have a return trip to the Hunter Valley with Dave & Sian. We also decided to get back to a roots a little and booked to stay on the caravan park which was great – an awesome setting to win by A$40m at Electronic Australian Monopoly! After having a rather large night on the sauce getting to the Hunter and then playing Monopoly we were all rather hung over the Saturday morning, some more than others, but by noon we were at the first cellar door and into the wine! By the third cellar door I had bought a case of wine and signed up for a wine membership – it would be a long & expensive weekend!
The wine was great, so much we brought back three dozen bottles! We visited some old favourites: Audrey, Pepper Tree, Tinklers and found some new gems: Tower, Piggs Peake to name a couple.
Fo the Monday we headed north again and went fishing in a tinny. Although my venture with the rod was fruitless (again!) Davey boy did catch a couple and almost promptly stepped out of the tinney to avoid the fish on the end of HIS rod! Needless to say, I had to un-hook his prizes and release back to the wild!
A top, top weekend! And we have something (for a while) to remember it by…
Italian Night
May 24th, 2009Always keen to get everyone together and spend the night eating and drinking, we decided to have an Italian themed night and get our hands dirty by making our own pasta from scratch.
There really isn’t much to making pasta – eggs and flour, but boy is it messy – thankfully our apartment has wooden floors, so the mess didn’t take too long to clear up! As usual we made enough pasta to feed the neighbourhood, but boy was it good and our homemade tomato sauce would definitely give Dolmio’s a run for its money.
Blue Mountains
May 24th, 2009Having been in Sydney for almost 6 months now, we thought it was time to explore our local region for the weekend and so hired and car and drove to the Blue Mountains for the weekend. The Blue Mountains is a bit like our Lake District (but switch lakes for mountains!) with amazing beautiful views. The area is called Blue Mountains, due to the vast coverage of eucalyptus trees which give off a hazy slate coloured mist.
The journey to the BM passed quickly (only 2 hours) and when we arrived we were got quite a fright at the drop in temperature – OMG it was freezing – hmmm, not sure if we need the shorts we both packed! This was the coldest we had been since Mongolia and it really felt like we were back in the UK.
After a leisurely breakfast on the Saturday (more so due to the ‘laid back’ service than choice) we wrapped up and headed out for a walk along the cliffs of the BM, down the ‘giant steps’ (all 900 of them), past the ‘three sisters’ making our way to catch the Sky Train back up to the top to our destination Echo Point. The Sky Train was terrifying, it’s the steepest railway in the world (we are certainly ticking them off – longest, fastest, now steepest!) and although not very long you are pretty much vertical. I can’t really say how the views were as I had my eyes closed most of the way – but the views from the Sky Way (little cable car from one mountain side to the other) were pretty impressive, especially standing on the glass floor looking down! After our bush walk we eventually managed to find ‘Echo’s’ – a fab boutique hotel / restaurant recommended by Sam & Marissa, where we rewarded ourselves with a drink. The hotel was fabulous and so we decided to treat ourselves and headed back for a bit of fine dining that evening – we couldn’t have been at more opposite ends of the spectrum – hostel accommodation, most expensive restaurant for dinner!
On the Sunday Dan had booked us in to go White water rafting at the white water centre, which was built for the 2000 Olympics. To say I was nervous is an understatement, but after being in the raft for all of 5 minutes and it overturning after the first rapid, I soon faced my fear! Thankfully the weather was much warmer in Penrith than the BM and we had a great day – a complete thrill and something to definitely do again with a gang of us!
Socialite Test…
April 22nd, 2009…just testing the integration from the blog to facebook one more time!