Greek Festival

Last weekend was a social one: drinks on Saturday night and brunch with a work friend on Sunday. In between that, I fit in a trip to the Greek Festival.

I caught the ferry on a lovely sunny afternoon to head over to Darling Harbour.

From there, I walked down to the Greek Festival. Turns out lots of people had the same idea!

There were lots of "interesting" merchandise stalls, like one dedicated to selling Greek music CDs, and another that sold replicas of just about everything.

I decided I didn't need anything, so I made my way down to the food and performance area. I just missed a performance, but the food stalls weren't going anywhere! And there were so many of them!

The loukoumades tent was pretty busy inside!

I bought some olive bead and a pastry called tachinopites to take home to T. To my surprise and utter disappointment, there was no baklava to be found at the entire festival! But it was still fun to be out, enjoying what I fear is one of the last true summer days of the season.

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Game nights

A lot of times, the day-to-day of being here feels "normal" - not particularly exotic or different from living anywhere else. But then occasionally, something will happen or we'll see something that is so very Australian that there's no forgetting how different it can be.

Game nights are a really good example of that. We went out last night for drinks with someone from work, and it just so happened that it was also a big rugby game night. Here are a couple pics I took to try and capture what it's like being in Sydney on rugby nights.

Like these gents at the train station.

So much to say about these guys, I don't even know where to start!

And this is how every pub looks.

And of course, there are the crazy drunk people walking along the sidewalks, which a picture just can't capture. Generally they are harmless young guys shouting about how much they love their team or singing. Sydney really shows off a different side on game nights and I love it!

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A night at the opera

For Valentines Day, we got tickets to the opera at the Opera House. We've walked around the Opera House dozens of times, but we've never been to a show there, so we were really excited!

We got tickets to "Great Opera Hits," a performance of well-known opera songs. There were four Australian opera performers that performed the songs, and it was a fabulous show.


One of my favorite parts of the evening was the camera monitor who was standing up in the box seats before the show. As people were taking selfies, he'd frown and flash his little flashlight and people and shake his finger at them. Toby wouldn't let me take a selfie, so I took one of the camera monitor instead.

And then I took a quick snap of the stage.

And then I snuck a selfie when we left.

Toby would not participate

It was fun just being in the building too!

He was actually happy, just not about me taking a picture

And then I found this cute guy when we left.

It was a Valentines Day date to remember!

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Saturday in Surry Hills

On Saturday I met Esther in Surry Hills for massage and Kurtosh. First, though, I had to find her in Central Station, which then caused us to be thrust into Spanish time, AKA late. So even though we'd planned to have Kurtosh first, we had to go straight to massage. That was OK though! It probably wouldn't have been that great having a Thai girl walking on my back when I was full of breakky!

When we did finally get our Kurtosh, it was worth the wait!

Then we walked around a bit in Surry Hills just enjoying the girl time.

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Happy Valentines Day

We had a great Valentines Day. This fun surprise package arrived from Mom & Dad.

And at work, we all got Valentines from the Experience team.

We celebrated with a nice dinner at home and just catching up on T & C time. Our big Valentines Day splurge was coming up on Sunday...!

Love was in the air!

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At the theatre

Lovely Emma friend England gave us tickets to go see a show at the theatre her bar is affiliated with.

Now, as cultured as T and I are, this is the first time we've been to a play in Sydney. =) So we made a whole night out of it.


First we went for dinner at an Italian spot near my office.

And yes, there were tons of those statues all over the place in there. But the food was really great!

The restaurant is in one of the older buildings in the CBD and is actually below street level. On the sidewalk above, I've always noticed glass tiles and wondered about them. As it turns out, regardless of their original purpose, they now serve to let light in on orchids that provide some contrast to the below-ground scenery.

After dinner, we headed down through Millers Point to the theatre. It was a nice walk and we had plenty of time to enjoy the cute buildings and interesting things along the way.

Toby was so excited to see the show, he walked off and left me while I was fully taking things in.

But eventually we made it to the theatre!

It's in the exact same building where our Saturday bar visit was, but I snapped a few more pics.

And then it was show time! It was a funny, sad play with lots of Australian accents going on. But we did follow along with a lot the slang, which made me feel pretty good about how far we've come in the past year and a half!

It was a really fun night and a nice change to our usual weeknight routine. We think we could be really good at a life of leisure that involves dinners out and shows every night. Thank you, Emma!

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The Bar at the End of the Wharf

On Saturday afternoon, T and I went out to visit The Bar at the End of the Wharf, the bar where Emma works. When we'd met her a couple weeks ago, she was telling us how cool it was, so we decided we'd check it out.

The bar is aptly named because it's at the very end of one of the refurbished wharves, surrounded by water on 3 sides. Like a lot of the bars in Sydney, a lot of it was open air so there was a nice harbour breeze blowing through.

Heading down to the bar

We ordered and got a seat outside. Not so bad!

Emma hand delivered our drinks to us. She made the summer cocktail menu, and one of the drinks was so popular they named it after her. Here she is with her namesake, the Pommy Emmy.

Fun Emma with her fun creation

It was just as delicious as it looks!

We enjoyed our Saturday afternoon drinks like fabulous people, and then we headed home back to our more normal life of laundry, cleaning, and catching up on TV shows.

It was a lovely afternoon!

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