Footy!!!

On Saturday night, we headed out to an Australian Football League game. My friend Helen from work organized tickets for a group of us, so Holly, Toby, and I donned some red gear and headed out!

It was easy enough to get to the stadium: we just followed all the people in red and white!

Then it was game time!

Which of us do you think would be the biggest fan?

If you guessed Holly, you were right!

I know, it's completely surprising! Here is further proof:

But Toby and I enjoyed the game almost as much as Holly, I think.

I really liked it because it was fast-paced, and the rules were easy enough to grasp with some help from our seatmates. There were a few weird things, though, like the fact that the trainers could be out on the field all the time, running back and forth from the bench and interacting with players. The game atmosphere was a little odd, too: people only cheered when something big was happening. The rest of the time it was pretty quiet in the stadium. They definitely need a little UT football spirit there!

The Sydney Swans lost by an embarrassing margin, but it was still a really fun game. And it didn't stop the fans from having fun on the train ride home. These guys sang for the whole train car (it wasn't a very nice song, but it sounded peppy!).

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Watsons Bay and Jamie Oliver's

We also managed to squeeze a meal at Jamie Oliver's and a ferry ride up to Watsons Bay into our Friday!

Our food at Jamie Oliver's was amazing. We shared the pumpkin and smoked mozzarella nachos to start, and then all got pasta dishes. Holly's pasta was hands-down the best, but we think we might all have been biased toward it since we saw them rolling it while we waited for our table. The whole meal felt extra fun because it was a Friday afternoon in the CBD and I was having a 2-hour lunch with wine instead of being at work!

After stuffing ourselves, we walked down to Circular Quay and caught the ferry over to Watsons Bay, one of my favorite ferry rides to one of my favorite places outside the city.
There were some guys being weird out on the front of the ferry.

Which in turn gave me and Holly the giggles. Sister giggles are the worst because they just build off each other until they get out of control. They tend to happen in church, so the ferry was a much more appropriate place.

Then we just spent a couple hours walking around Watsons Bay and enjoying the sights.

We climbed up to an overlook that showed off the city. Holly and Toby let me take pictures of them there. In their own ways.

It was a long day! But we knocked off a few magnets and had a wonderful time!

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Outdoor weekends in Milsons Point

We absolutely couldn't have asked for better weather on Holly's last weekend in Sydney. On Saturday morning, we skyped with friends and family, ate at the Kurtosh house, and then decided the day was meant to be spent outside!

So Holly and I packed up a bottle of wine, some crackers, a blanket, and some entertainment (iPad for blogging for me, and postcards to write for Holly). And then we walked out to get a place in the sun!

The weather was perfect for t-shirt and jeans: it really can't get better than that for the middle of winter!
We weren't the only people with the idea of spending the day with a view in the sun, so after our spot got crowded, we migrated over to Lavender Bay park. Holly made it her mission to get her postcards written there.

This is her postcard-writing face. If you're lucky enough to get one of these from her, know that they don't come easily to her!

Sunday was just as beautiful, and we walked over to the Kirribili Markets. It was a great day at the markets: there was a great band, good food vendors, and lots of fun shopping!

Holly looks like she belongs in Sydney!

Stuff to buy!

My sweet neighbor met us at the markets for a minute and offered to take a picture of me and Holly together.

Thank goodness I still had two vacation days after this weekend - I don't think I could have faced going back to work after two such wonderful days!

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Holly meets Aussie animals at Featherdale

Friday was our day to go out to Featherdale Wildlife Park and see all the Australian animals it had to offer. On my first trip to Featherdale, I was seeing all of these animals for the very first time. When Holly went to Featherdale, she'd already seen kangaroos, koalas, cockatoos, lorikeets, wallabies, and penguins, most of them in the wild. So it was a slightly different experience for her, but she liked it all the same!

Toby volunteered to take pictures during the day. He did a good job. =)

Our first stop in Featherdale was seeing the kangaroos and wallabies. And feeding them!

We were also just in time for a reptile photo-op. Toby got to hold this cool guy!

We later realized this is the only picture of the three of us from Holly's entire trip

Our other animal interaction was with the cutie koalas!

After getting up close with all these animals, we checked out the rest of the animal exhibits. These guys were just chillalxing in the sun.

And this one clearly had eaten too much and just fallen straight asleep in his food.

We learned that Holly is smaller than many Australian animals. But we knew this already.

We all had different favorite parts of Featherdale that day. Holly really liked the wombats. They are so cute when they waddle around; we watched different ones for a long time!

I liked the penguins. Of course, we'd seen them in the wild a few days before, but I loved seeing them again!

And Toby really liked holding the lizard, but the dingoes probably came in at the top of his list. There were a couple dingo pups out, sleeping in the sun.

We all loved seeing all the animals. Holly made the observation that many Australian animals looked like large rodents, which, I have to admit, is kind of right.

A quick walk through the gift shop, then we headed back to the city!

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Australian treats with Holly

After we got back to Sydney, we made a focused effort to share the best Australian treats we know with Holly! Here's a capture of our American attempts to enjoy life Aussie-style.

TimTam slam

First up was a TimTam slam. The first go was a bit rough for Holly, but the second one was a raging success. Two thumbs up from everyone!

Pavlova

Next up was pavlova, which is kind of like a giant meringue. I haven't made one before, so it was an adventure together!

It turned out pretty, and we all were fans of it. The passion fruit that we got to put on top with the other fruit wasn't anyone's favorite part, but it was fun to try. Another success!

Kurtosh

On our last Saturday morning together in Sydney, we headed out to Kurtosh House. It was time to try the pastry that we'd been so intrigued with a week and a half ago!

We caught a train up to a town a little bit north of Milsons Point, and then walked to Crows Nest, a town lucky enough to have a Kurtosh House.

It was impossible to decide between cinnamon & sugar and Nutella. So we went with both. So good! And so fun to eat! I'm not sure which one was the best, but I do know you can't really go wrong with a Nutella pastry!

High Tea

Tea is such a big thing here. Not only are there tea houses that exist solely to do teas, but most of the nice hotels do teas as well. I'd bought a Groupon for a high tea at the Swissotel here in Sydney so Holly and I could do our first high tea together!

We got a great table by the window overlooking the CBD. And anything that starts with bubbles is bound to be good!

We made our own tea from a little tea cart, and then the tea platter was served.

There were egg salad, marinated veggie, chicken salad, and ham sandwiches on the bottom tier. The middle was scones with cream and jam - maybe our favorites of the day! And the top was sweets: a nut layer cake, chocolate tart, pistachio cream puff, and a berry mousse. We ate almost every bite!

We decided we could handle becoming ladies of society and have high tea every day!

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Eastern Beaches Coastal Walk

Our first day back in Sydney, after our southern adventure, we had high tea (since that's the kind of ladies that we are), and then we caught the bus out to Bondi beach to do the walk to Coogee beach. In hindsight, Holly's cold was pretty bad and we should have been catching the bus to the doctor (which we did do the next day). But, we pressed on!

Holly really liked the rock formations around the walk.

She sent pictures of them to all her hydrogeologist friends. As one does.

But mainly we just enjoyed the views along the walk.

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