Australia Days 3-5 (Tue 11th-Thu 13th)
On the Tuesday we didn't do much except go out to Manly Beach. Well, we went to see Big Things first - Jen had found a few online maps detailing the various aspects of Oz's love of the large, so we saw the Big Bullets that she'd spotted on her way back from her pizza the night before. Anyway, saw those and some Big Matchsticks (not hard to find from that photo), then went out to Manly, wandered over to a smaller beach, went on a walk up and around the head of that peninsula. Home and bed - still not feeling great.
I woke up on Wednesday feeling revived (and this was basically the end of jet-lag), and told Jen that I felt like I'd slept soundly. She grumpily confirmed that I had, but that very sound sleep had unlocked a level of snoring that she'd never experienced before. We'd planned to head out to the Blue Mountains, but we returned after getting halfway there due to a medical scare (but only a scare - it's a long and icky story but it presented as very very serious and wasn't any serious at all). This was probably for the best as the last of Jen's jetlag plus the monster she'd slept next to means that she was pretty snoozy for the rest of the day. So we did the things we'd hoped to do on Thursday - laundry, buy new shoes for me (my walking shoes were a little too bust), pick up portobello mushrooms and halloumi for the post-wedding barbecue. In the evening we went over to see my old colleague Donncha, who's been living here for 17 years now, having returned very shortly after work sent both of us over together in 1999.
And then on Thursday back out to the Blue Mountains - stopped off in Katoomba, went on a walk down 900 steps into a tree-filled gorge (only half-way down, it turned out), then along a path for a few hours and the world's steepest railway back up (we both reckoned that going up was just about alright, but going down would have been a Very Different Matter). We missed a train back by about 5 minutes, so sat around for an hour in the station pub checking out the names of the various local bands - a regular night at the pub was DJed by a Flava Dave. And then back and very definitely sleep.
I woke up on Wednesday feeling revived (and this was basically the end of jet-lag), and told Jen that I felt like I'd slept soundly. She grumpily confirmed that I had, but that very sound sleep had unlocked a level of snoring that she'd never experienced before. We'd planned to head out to the Blue Mountains, but we returned after getting halfway there due to a medical scare (but only a scare - it's a long and icky story but it presented as very very serious and wasn't any serious at all). This was probably for the best as the last of Jen's jetlag plus the monster she'd slept next to means that she was pretty snoozy for the rest of the day. So we did the things we'd hoped to do on Thursday - laundry, buy new shoes for me (my walking shoes were a little too bust), pick up portobello mushrooms and halloumi for the post-wedding barbecue. In the evening we went over to see my old colleague Donncha, who's been living here for 17 years now, having returned very shortly after work sent both of us over together in 1999.
And then on Thursday back out to the Blue Mountains - stopped off in Katoomba, went on a walk down 900 steps into a tree-filled gorge (only half-way down, it turned out), then along a path for a few hours and the world's steepest railway back up (we both reckoned that going up was just about alright, but going down would have been a Very Different Matter). We missed a train back by about 5 minutes, so sat around for an hour in the station pub checking out the names of the various local bands - a regular night at the pub was DJed by a Flava Dave. And then back and very definitely sleep.