Soft Serves, Potato Salad and Rain

Back in Canberra today after spending the weekend in Sydney. Had a great time, met a few people, walked around and umm... stuff.

3 hour bus rides aren't too bad, even if they take a little longer than 3 hours due to traffic. Bus driver again had something to say "If you require a toilet, go down the stairs in the middle of the bus. You will find two doors, one of which will be rather hazardous to you at 100 km/h."

Got there ok though, and after trying to have dinner at Pancakes on the Rocks (we didn't feel like waiting an hour for the meal), we wandered a little further and settled for Wakamama.



After another wander around Darling Harbour and the like, we headed back to David and Grace's place where Brendan proceeded to take 4 hours to solve a Rubics Cube (you'd think he'd have it down pat by now, wouldn't you?).

Staying at David and Grace's house was like staying in a hotel - Bacon and Eggs cooked for us before we woke up on Saturday (Thanks David!). After breakfast, we took a walk down to Markets at the Rocks, ate some chilli that was way too hot (well, David did anyways), and chocolate-coated strawberries. Went to the Museum of Modern Art (not particularly exciting - except for one piece which was a room with knives hanging from the ceiling and nails sticking up from the floor). I wasn't too impressed otherwise - random drawings/objects which apparently have some random meaning. Modern Art apparently isn't for me...

Took a trip to Chinatown for lunch (ate way too much), and then managed to buy a 4 gb SDHC card for $69 =D Bargin. It allows me to take over one thousand pictures at 7 megapixels... and 13 minutes of high definition video. Looks like my hard drive is going to be rather full by the end of the trip.

Wasted some money on skill testers, made some fairy floss out of a machine (blue raspberry or something) before trying to plan out dinner for about 9.

Picked up a few of Grace's friends (in a following car), drove around a roundabout twice (significantly harder to do in Sydney than Adelaide), went shopping, and picked up a dvd (Russel Peters is a funny guy).

Then we decided to go to McDonalds on the way back. Managed to get Bensen (driver of other car) to follow us through the Drive-Thru, and bought some soft serve - two for us and two for Bensen's car... without telling him. Unfortunately this backfired slightly, as they bought 3 icecreams for the 3 of them. Thus they ended up with 5 melting soft serves, and had to stop to eat them.

I've got a video of it all which I may post later - the girl taking our order looks at me very funnily a couple of times ("Why's that freak in the back seat videoing me?"), but it was kinda funny.

We cooked dinner together (9 of us in all), with pre-marinated chicken, pork (or was it beef?), some duck, some vegies, and a potato salad with pink potatoes (don't give Brendan food colouring). The potato salad took most of forever to make, and I think we started dinner at about 10pm... but I'd class it as a success =P

Dessert was our own version of chocolate covered strawberries which (I think) were more fun to make than eat, but oh well...



Played a game of Bartok (teaching someone is always funny), and bed.

Sleeping in is fun - Although probably a waste of time. Started the day at 11:30ish with another cooked breakfast (thanks David again!), and head into the city. Wasted more money on skill testers before heading to the fish markets for lunch. That was a good plan - the seafood was awesome. Had a seafood platter, and then bought some fresh oysters... from Coffin Bay.



At this point in time it started pouring. Driving was pretty dangerous, and with 4 people in the back probably not too good a thing. Attempted to make it to Darling Harbour, but didn't really feel like going swimming outside, so we ended up going to a dessert place for... dessert.

It took half an hour to decide what to have, but we settled on Chocolate Orange Waffles - which was pretty awesome (even if the 'orange liquor' was just marmalade in a shot glass).

Bummed around a bit more before trying to make it to the bus. From Xina and Bin's house (in the city), the bus stop was a couple of blocks away. However, we managed to pick a point where it was absolultely pouring. Ended up with very, very wet jeans and shoes for the ride back - even with an umbrella.

Got back fairly late, made a few phone calls, and yeah.. not much else. Waiting for Brendan to finish an assignment in the library at the moment. Then we shall go explore all that Canberra has to offer!

(Should be back by lunchtime)

And I shall post again later with a few more Photos... for those of you who can't be bothered reading my dribble (too late now, isn't it? =P)