Sydney, part 3

a Crocodile Hunter Barbie - comes with a croc skin  accessory!

More about Sydney here and here.

Saturday afternoon in Sydney we split up, which was kind of wonderful. We do really well travelling together, but after so much time together; I think we forget we can do things on our own. So a chance to wander with out feeling bad that Andrew was bored was a bit of a novelty. I went down to the Rocks, an old historic area, which had a little market going on, and had so much fun browsing around. I got some beautiful abstractish prints from a boy with autism who paints, browsed the sweetest little bookshop and wrote down some new titles for my reading list, found fantastic old prints off Sydney from the 60s and 70s, and had an amazing cob of corn. So, so good, I tried to drag Andrew down on Sunday to try it, but he did not seem to catch the excitement. Yumm. As soon as I bought a print for my dad, it promptly started to pour, so I tried to be fast getting back, got lost, and eventually made it back to meet Andrew, forgetting to do a few things I had meant to take care of. Oops. Still, it was one of my favourite afternoons in a while. Something about getting on the train by myself and just being on my own was kind of exhilarating. Yes I am lame.

Sunday we headed over to the Hillsong church, which was pretty neat. We really enjoyed the speaker there. After the service, we found ourselves in a welcome to the church party, where I relied on Andrew to chat with the people while I devoured a delicious breakfast thing. It was so good I did not want to drink my juice because it would get rid of the taste. And I love juice. Yum!

After this, we headed over to Bondi Beach for another market, but were not overly impressed. We debated going to a movie as it was rainy out, but nothing worked out. By this point we were fairly done with Sydney I think.

Monday was our flight day, so we filled the day with some internet time, and some shopping. This was also the day that I ate the best yogurt of my life. I wish I had some right now. It was from a mall food court, and it was a good thing I discovered it on the last day, otherwise I would have had to have it every day. Delicious yogurt place, please come live by me. I also had a great bagel, which would receive more praise except that the yogurt was sooo good! We still ended up at the airport rather early, and were able to be bumped onto an earlier flight which was really nice. However it turned out that we really did not need to be moved, as delay-palooza was about to start, but it was still nice. We were very impressed with Qantas.

After a lovely hour sitting on the grass in the sun in Melbourne, we headed back inside to start the delay fest. Long story short our 8:30 flight did not leave until about 2:30. The airline was very kind, giving out food vouchers and whatever, but we went past customs and security too early into the airport wasteland. There were some cafes, but nothing all that great. We worked hard to entertain ourselves during the delay; I think I tried on every speck of clothing in that place (did not buy anything but oh man there was some cute stuff). We also started a lap walking competition, the goal being to complete two laps in the exact same amount of time. This was a little embarrassing but got us moving I guess! Eventually I started to take a nap, but was woken up by people yelling at the airline staff. Honestly my first thought was that we needed to hide because someone surely had a gun. Not sure exactly what happened, but some frustrated people started taking out their frustrations, and the police ended up getting involved. Yikes.

At long last, we did get on the plane, had some of Andrew’s top ranked airline food, and slept most of the way, until we arrived in snowy Beijing!