My body clock woke me at 5:30 this morning and I figured there really wasn't any point in trying to go back to sleep, so I got up and hammered away at finishing yesterday's post for about two hours. I really do need to find a way to be more concise...
Let's see how that works out for me.
At about 7:30 Ma messaged me saying she was ready when I was, so I finished up my writing and got ready before trundling down to her room with my shoes and socks in hand and once we decided on a plan we were out the door by about 8:15 or so.
We decided to walk down by the Harbour and head around to Café Fredo for breakfast since it was so nice last time, and Saturday felt like a good time to have a big-ass breakfast.
But getting back to my breakfast and my latte. Thank god for coffee. Really! I think that really was what my body had been missing for the last couple of days... it's twice weekly shot of caffeine. There was also an added bonus at Fredo, some very attractive members of the Fire Department Hazmat team... you gotta love a man with reflective tape on his pants!
After the giant mountain of food (although I'm reasonably convinced we walked most of it off during the day) we headed up to The Rocks Market... and even though I was guessing about where we needed to go.
And The Rocks Markets made me both miss and not miss the Bowerbird Bazaar back in Adelaide this weekend.
Weirdly, I didn't even recognise the exceptional stall for what it was when we looked at one side of it, it was only when we circled around that we discovered something amazing.
The stall, AHW Studio, sold jewellery made from unrepairable watches... some of them looked and felt very Steampunkian, in fact one of the ones that originally caught my eye had a working propeller attached to the front of it. But I really don't need any more jewellery... I don't really wear a lot of the stuff I already have.
But Ma liked them and had decided she was going to get one from another part of the stall, so I wandered back to the propeller design, half thinking that I might buy it. The young guy who makes them started talking to me, and before I know it we were talking about design and he was showing me pictures of the most amazing watch on his iPhone.
There really isn't anything sexier than meeting somebody who is so incredibly passionate about a topic that something that originally just a little project transforms them into someone passionate about knowledge and detail on that subject.
In the end I think we stood with him for about 20 minutes or so... and he was just telling us about all the watches and I ended up looking at the watches with new eyes... not quite through his eyes, but I wanted one that spoke to me.
And of course, the little voice that I listen to for that kind of thing has very expensive tastes.
We both walked away from that conversation a little stunned I think... impressed but still stunned. And pretty much everything else in the markets after that seemed like cheap mass produced crap. I'm sure it wasn't but it wasn't on the same level.
We wandered back towards town via bits of The Rocks Ma didn't see last time, then headed into the city to do pretty much what we do on any number of Saturdays, wander in and out of shops and occasionally buy things.
First stop was Books Kinokuniya for some more of the Perspex display cases, then we headed further up Pitt Street in search of the one comic book shop in Sydney that shows up on Google Maps. Turned out to be a great store, even though they didn't have any of the blind box stuff I thought they might.
We started to head back to Pitt Street Mall, but I realised we were within spitting distance of Hyde Park so we wandered over to check out the AIDS Trust Sydney Food and Wine Fair. It turned out to be one of those "buy tokens then use them to buy food" deals, so we only walked through it, we didn't actually stop.
But it’s the first time in a long while I've been anywhere with quite that many homosexualists.
We wandered past the outside of David Jones to check on whether the Christmas windows were up, but the windows were all covered with advertising... which I think means they're probably working on them. It just seems weird that last year when we were here at pretty much the exact same time, Christmas seemed to have bloomed everywhere... this year not so much.
Anyway, we ended up back at Pitt Street Mall after that, did a quick stop in JB for headphones for Ma, then wandered upstairs in Westfield Sydney to grab a drink at the food court.
We settled on Top Juice for some fruit salad and a drink... and damn it was a good idea. Their fruit salad is the single best one I've ever eaten (and I'm including my own in that list)... and the drink was Pear and something and Mint... also delish!
I think I said it last time, but I do love the whole feel of that food court... it feels classy and intimate, even when it's crammed full of people. I'd kinda prefer it at 9am without many people in it like last time though.
We also stopped off at the very full and very funky Happy Lab where they have all manner of candies in all manner of scientific container. I ended up with a test tube full of Mint Sorbet Happy Beans, a little container of Anis Mimi Meetoo's (which kinda look like smaller Smarties or M&Ms). Too cute... even if they end up tasting horrible.
Then there was a somewhat pointless excursion through both David Jones and Myer to see if they had anything different in the silver/pewter money box ouvre that I could get for the new Baby Sugarmonkey. I did find one, but I'm pretty sure they have the exact same one back in Adelaide, so I'll just wait and get it there.
After that we ended up doing a weird underground detour from one of the shops (Myer maybe) all the way back through to QVB, did a bit of a look around there (I saw a gorgeous toy soldier tea pot in one of the stores, but it would be too hard to bring back on the plane) then called it a day (we had been out of the hotel for about eight hours at that point) and came back to the hotel.
I threw myself into the shower with great gusto as soon as I walked back into my room in an effort to cool off... which worked for about the same length of time that I was actually in the shower before trying to be as brief as I know how while writing up the events of the day.
Now we just need to work out where the hell to go and eat. I'm kind of in the mood for something Asian with a lot of vegetables... oh wait... we did Asian last night already... I have no idea.
And you know what, I still kinda have no idea about dinner.
While I was waiting for Ma to finish getting organised, I was catching up on Twitter and discovered that about an hour beforehand Qantas had grounded every single one of its planes until further notice. At the moment that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot to us... after all, this whole thing could blow over by Tuesday, but it’s definitely something I'm going to be keeping an eye on between now and Friday. It does seem that this particular holiday has been a little bit cursed though. Or maybe it's just holidays this year in general...
But getting back to the arduous quest for food...
We had absolutely no idea what the hell we wanted for dinner, so we wandered all the way up to the Rocks, then down to look at the restaurants along the water, but it all felt very overpriced and a little bit too too much, so we wandered back around to the Opera House side and went to Searock Fish (also somewhere we went to last year).
Their burger was actually quite nice... although I probably should have got them to swap out the chips for salad... the only thing I can really taste now is the chips.
After dinner we wandered back here, split off to our own rooms briefly before regrouping in Ma's room to try and come up with some plans for the next few days... or at least plan out the absolutes, see what else we wanted to do and where things fit.
We managed some of it okay... although I'm still not sure where the hell we're going for breakfast tomorrow...
And, on the up side, I've managed to talk about a very full day in about 1000 less words than yesterday.
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