Interactive theatre

On Monday, Toby and I both had to work - gotta pay the piper for all this fun! But we had an after-work event that Toby had picked out: an interactive theater in Surry Hills! It was kind of like a murder mystery party but with real actors and spread out over a suburb.

We started out with a text from Chief Detective, telling us to meet at a gazebo near Central Station. He met us there to give us the details of the case!

The "case" we were given to solve was based on an actual unsolved murder in Sydney in 1929. I looked it up afterward, and found the newspaper article about it at the time. Of course, there were a few liberties taken with the story in our event!

We were in a group of about 10 total. This cute family from England dressed in character for the time period!

We found our first suspect at a bar up the road.

We interrogated her over a drink and figured out our next clue.

Which was disguised (more or less) in a menu.

Then we headed off to track down a few more suspects scattered through the streets of Surry Hills (along with more clues).

We ended up catching our suspect in an alleyway. And, lo and behold, some champagne and tapas were there waiting on us too!

And then we went through the back door in the alleyway and into a tapas restaurant where we had a great dinner!

Even though none of us quite knew what to expect with this little adventure, it ended up being really fun! The food was delicious, the group was good-spirited, and we solved the mystery! A fun night!

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Newtown & Surry Hills

Ready for a break from the beach, we designated Sunday as our suburb exploration day. It was also a cooler (mid-70's) and super windy day, so walking around fun areas of the city seemed like a good thing to do.

We started out going to Newtown. It's a western suburb of Sydney that has lots of eclectic shops and restaurants. It's fun for walking around and just looking at interesting things.

Our first stop was Black Star Pastry, a fabulous bakery and coffee shop in the heart of Newtown.

Our treats were tasty! We had bread pudding with a delicious sauce, and my favorite: strawberry and watermelon cake. So delicious!

Then we did some window shopping in some of the cool little stores nearby.

There's Toby, standing hopefully by a lunch menu

After we walked around in Newtown for a couple hours, we headed back to Central and walked up to Surry Hills. Surry Hills turned into a bit more of an eating tour than a shopping tour. =)

We started with a snack at a sushi bar.

We sat by the bar, and it was a lot of fun to watch the chefs do their thing.

After a small bite here and some time relaxing at the bar, we headed down the street to change it up with some Italian.

Toby really was having a good time, I promise!

We just ordered some small plates of bruschetta and arancini, along with some drinks. It was all super delicious! And we got some bonus bites of fresh biscotti with our check.

Our final stop on the food tour of Surry Hills was at Kurtosh for the funnest pastries in the world!

This is the way to spend an afternoon in Surry Hills!

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Beach days

Friday and Saturday were both sunny, warm days. Which meant.... Beach days!!!

On Friday, we got ourselves up and ready and headed out to Manly. We caught the Manly Ferry from Circular Quay, which is half the fun of going to Manly, I think.

This bird landed on this pole thingy at the front and rode there for a long time!

And we just rode in our seats.

We got to the beach early, so it was pretty quiet. These brave people got in the water!

Here's what Michelle's face looked like when the water hit her feet.

We had a good day at Manly: hanging out under the umbrella, eating snacks, and just generally enjoying the day!

After all that beach fun, we headed back to the city, cleaned up, and went to Jamie Oliver's for dinner.

We closed out the night with drinks by the harbour while the sun set - a pretty hard day to beat!

The next beach day was Coogee. We started with breakfast at Badde Manors, one of our favorite vegetarian places in Sydney.

It's very common to have beans and avocado with breakfast in Australia, so the vegetarian version had that too.

Yummo beach breakfast! 

Then we caught a bus over to Coogee! We started out with three umbrellas:

Toby called this "tent city"

But after many hilarious attempts, the wind took one down, and the other two quickly followed. It was vicious!

That did stop us from enjoying the beach. We walked over to the tide pools, and Chris even got in the cold water for a swim.

View of the beach from the tide pool

The look on Chris' face makes me think it's cold!

Once we were ready for some shade and cool, we moved into the park behind the beach and had a picnic there. We closed out our beach day kicking the soccer ball around the green.

There was no Jamie Oliver's after this long day out: just snacks, games, and a movie!

We love beach days!!!

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