Back Home Again

Once again we breakfasted at the cafe at the hotel. This time I had a veggie brekky that included halloumi cheese, hash browns, mushies, egg and toast and Alicea had a huge fruit salad with yoghurt and fruit compote (or compost) as she kept calling it.

We then packed up the car and checked out before heading to the Lake Maquarie City Art Gallery at Booragul.

It had a couple of exhibitions on which were reasonably interesting showing artworks from Indigenous peoples and from a couple of Aussie artists.

The grounds had several sculptures in them, which were quite good. The sculpture at the entrance to the grounds, shown here, represents several symbols of the lake including a mooring post and a boat hull.

From there, we drove out of the area and to Terrigal where we had lunch in an Italian restaurant. The waiter managed to spill a whole glass of diet coke over our table, luckily I was only splashed. From there, we had a quick coffee at another cafe before driving back to Sydney, just in time to watch the final Sydney FC game of the season, in which they managed to beat Newcastle 3-2 to secure a place in the finals.

 

Ironic

Okay, so the title of this blog entry is based on a bad joke from a trip to the Hunter Valley I made with John in September last year when we were passing by a town called Morriset. You had to be there...

So, we got up before the cafe was open for breakfast and after a shower with the word's largest shower head (it was like it was raining throughout the whole room) we wandered down to the beach and watched the surfers and paddle-boarders(?) for a bit.

Caves Beach

Then we went back to the cafe for some brekky. Scrambled egg and bacon on toast for Alicea and the same for me except I had smoked salmon instead of the bacon. Not bad, and reasonably priced. Then, after gathering a few bits, we headed off in the car towards Morriset to look at the mega market we had read about. It wasn't that exciting being, pretty much, a huge warehouse filled with stalls selling nothing that we were interested in, fishing stuff, tshirts, gardening bits and a few stalls selling tat.

From there, we drove to Toronto, where we wandered along the lakeside and then had lunch at a cafe just over the road. After a quick wander up and down the main street and stopping to buy a couple of books in a small bookstore we drove back to the hotel, completing our circumnavigation of the lake.

Toronto

After a brief nap and some reading (I'd bought Game of Thrones earlier in the bookstore) we got ready to go out.

The restaurant, Brown Sugar at Bayview, was about a thirty minute drive away in Warner's Bay and we arrived pretty much bang on time. The meal was lovely. The service and food were great and we had a window tale that gave us a view out over the lake.

We started with a plate of scallops on kumara purée that we shared before moving onto starters. I has top stuffed zucchini flowers and Alicea has pumpkin balls, crispy wanton wrappers and goats cheese. For mains I had swordfish with celeriac mash and beurre noisette and Alicea had "beef and reef" which was steak with moreton bay bug. For dessert I had pear frangipani with creme anglaise and Alicea had a baileys affogato.

Every course was really tasty and with drinks and coffee, the bill came to $185 which we thought was pretty reasonable.

From there we went back to the hotel just in time to catch the last few minutes of the Swans vs Giants AFL game on the tv.

 

A Weekend at Lake Macquarie

It took ages to finally get out of Sydney and onto the freeway. The traffic was pretty heavy. I guess it's like that most, if not all, weekday evenings during the rush hour so we shouldn't be surprised.

Once on the freeway, the traffic flowed more freely and we arrived at the Caves Beachside Hotel at a bit before 8.30pm. We booked in and then had something to eat and drink before going to our cabin. The food turned up really fast - before each of us had even had time to get a drink from the bar. I had fish and chips and Alicea had a Thai beef salad.

After we had finished eating, went to our cabin, which was really lovely.

There are no internal doors, the toilet and bathroom just have a sort of wall partition to divide them from the bedroom, which is a bit weird. But it is really nice and there are complimentary snacks, breakfast goodies and even a bottle of sparkling wine!