Been here a month...

Saturday 28/2

Another week has passed of our All Aussie Adventure! The room at the back of the apartment block was certainly a lot quieter than the room at the front and there was quite a nice, but distant, view of Cremorne Point and Sydney Harbour, which was nice when the Queen Mary 2 cruise liner came to visit in the week. She was huge! I was hoping to be able to go and get some photos, but she was only in port until Thursday night.

Last Sunday afternoon we went across the road to the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace, a restored Art Deco cinema. It is really special inside. The decoration is beautiful in all the screens. The big screen apparently has an organ that plays between selected performances. We saw the Reader, for which Kate Winslett won an Oscar. She deserved it, it was a really good film However, for me, the cinema was the star and I shall be happy to travel out this way to watch a film rather than one of the big multiplexes in the shopping malls.

The rest of the week has been fairly normal. Work has been going okay, although I did have a very frustrating day when everything went wrong. You know the kind of day I mean – we all have them now and then.

Alicea has gone down to Melbourne this weekend to visit her friends and to arrange the transport of the furniture that she has had in storage for the last few years to our flat next week.
So I'm on my own and have to amuse myself for a couple of days.

I joined a gym in the week and went for the first time today. When I got back to Cremorne I discovered that I couldn't get back up to our room as the fire brigade were trying to free seven people that were trapped in one of the lifts. So, I treated myself to a large breakfast of Eggs Benedict with mushrooms and rocket instead of ham at an Italian cafe across the road. It was great and there was loads of it.

After finishing breakfast I went back to the apartment block but couldn't get to our apartment as the firemen were still working on the lifts and the firedoors only opened from the inside so there was no access from the stairs. So, I caught a bus to Sydney and went to Paddy's Market. The market was a fair walk from Wynyard, where the bus stopped, but I had a large breakfast to walk off so I didn't mind.

The market is pretty big selling clothes, toys, electronics, mobile phone accessories and it has a large fresh fruit and veg section. I spent an hour or so wandering up and down the aisles looking at all the wares for sale.

Once I had done, I went across the road to Chinatown where I found a food court with about a dozen small outlets selling all sorts of oriental dishes at very reasonable, no let me rephrase that – very cheap prices. I had a tofu and vegetable Laksa, which was nice but the portion was huge and, having had such a large breakfast, I couldn't finish it. Still at $6 (about £3) I didn't mind too much.

I then walked back to Wynyard and caught a bus back to the apartment where the lift saga had, thankfully, ended and I could now get back to our room.