Week 11: "Lets go to the beach beach... lets go get away..."

Week 11, lets go.

The week kicked off in great culinary form... Sunday and Monday night I had peppered steaks with mash and carrots... sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo tasty. My old boss would be proud of cooking them perfectly as medium rare, nice and pink in the middle... yummmmmmmmmmmmm.

Monday was not too eventful, lectures, practicals and I skipped movie night this week as it was Space Jam. Instead we watched After Earth in a friends flat. An interesting movie, it could ha
ve been so good but it just wasnt quite there, we ended up picking so many holes in it and laughing at it, oops.



Tuesday came and went relatively quickly. I went down and helped out with a Smile Garden project that KB are part of. I was trying to get people to have their picture taken and donate money to a mental health charity and the pictures are going to be hung around uni which is pretty cool. Note to self, don't go into advertising. But good fun nonetheless.

Wednesday had a great forecast so halfway through the morning I decided to do the work for my afternoon practical and head down to the beach. We had great fun soaking up the sun and messing around in the waves! We all came back pretty red. Wednesday evening was our infamous glassy night. Great fun as per usual :) and I managed to only buy one drink when out, bonus. The end of the night got even better as I was treated to a kebab by my flatmate... I dont think I can describe how good it was so I am not going to try and then when we got back to KB waffles were being made for us all. So a kebab and two waffles later I headed off to bed.

Thursday was spent attempting to do work and then giving up and headed to the beach. We tried to go up to Towradgi beach as a bit of a change but the strong wind was whipping the sand into us so we headed down to North Beach and found a slightly sheltered spot. Another pleasant afternoon was spent soaking up the sun and splashing in the surf :).

Friday morning was an early 8.30am lecture and then I managed to do a good few hours of work in the library before going off to meet my international buddies for coffee (not that I drink coffee tehe).
Friday afternoon I had my haircut by a mate over at old KB, Im not going to lie I was a bit apprehensive when she was snipping and snipping but I should have had more faith as it turned out great :), of course I couldnt have her do it for free so I gave her a pack of tim tams (tim tams=amazing!!!!). Fitness friday killed me this week, I have a slight sniffle and cough so I died pretty quickly, but hey ho its great doing so much exercise... all of those endorphin's. On Friday night we went down to North Gong pub and had some foodies to celebrate a friends 19th birthday. It was unbelievably good not having to cook for myself.

Saturday morning was KB sports, but as its the beginning of mid-session we only had a few of us. We headed down regardless and got a masterclass in how to play basketball. I got some practice of my korfball shooting, but it is so much easier in a basketball hoop than  in a korf. I grabbed some lunch and cycled off down to the beach with my board for a surf. The beach was pretty seaweedy but I managed to stand up on my first attempt! Unfortunately the waves died down and I called it a day, not before soaking up some more rays.

Dad I know you wanted a picture of my bicycle contraption so here it is :).

Saturday evening we had a movie night and watched the Hangover 3 and the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. It occurred to me, if you haven't read the book that film would seem so very random!!! That evening I also gobbled half a bar of real English chocolate, Aussi chocolate is just not the same!

Sunday was an early start... up for 7am and I headed straight down to get a train to Sydney. I managed to navigate from Central to Circular Quay without a map (I know right!?) and on the way came across some random art... there were random yellow snails everywhere, oh and did I say they were massive!

I also came across this cool arrangement of mirror pillars in Hyde Park, when you walked through them it was really hard to distinguish between reflections and the landscape.

After meeting up with my friend from UEA we took some snaps at the Opera House and Sydney Bridge. We then headed up to Sydney Bridge which gave an awesome view of Circular Quay, Opera House and all the skyscrapers.

We headed back through The Rocks which is a famous row of market stalls and boutiques, we nabbed some freebies and headed off to get the boat to manly. Being a sunday it was really busy but we didnt have to wait too long for a ferry. We navigated to the back of the boat and got a stunning view of Circular Quay as we left. We also were witness to a proposal made using an aeroplane and vapour in the sky over Sydney, lets hope she said yes!

We stopped off at subway once we arrived at Manly for lunch and sat on Manly beach stuffing our faces... yum yum yum. There were so many surfers out in the water! It was definitely the most surfers I have ever seen along one beach. We then headed off to Shelly Beach, a short walk along the coast. We discovered why it was called Shelly beach because there were loads of shells on it... We donned out goggles and went to go see what we could find under the water. After lots of steamed up goggles and pretty cool water we saw a few pretty cool fish and went to dry off in the sun. After overhearing some hilariously bogan banter from the group next to us we headed back to the ferry and Sydney CBD. By this time it was late afternoon but we still went to Sydney Aquarium (with a cheeky BOGOFF voucher), we saw some hence sharkes, creepy crayfish and many jellies.

By this time we were once again ravenous for foodies, so we wandered into the city and eventually found a cool little pub, that resembles a darker Weatherspoons, and we had some fish and chips and me a ciders. Lets just say it doesnt compare to English fish and chips but it was still soooo good! It was getting on a bit so after eating we headeback to central and headed our separate ways. My 1h45 journey wasnt too bad, I nearly fells asleep so many times but managed to get off at the right stop.

All in all it was such a great day! I have finally seen the big attraction in Sydney, phew!

More photos to come :)