Family & Friends

Leslie and Smat are here! They arrived last Friday morning early, looking rather chipper, which is quite unusual after flying for 21 hours. But they took my great advice about staying up as long as possible on the plane, so they were on a pretty regular Aussie sleep schedule. Once they got to UniLodge we went and banged on Guido's door for awhile (after finding out from Smat I'd given him the wrong room number, on whose door he was banging for quite awhile, hopefully no one was in there since it was quite early!) Les, Mom and I went across the street and got breakfast which pretty much sucked, in other words, Broadway should only be used in the case of lunch or dinner. After being thoroughly disappointed with my scrambled eggs, we went back to UniLodge so Les could shower and Mom could finish laundry and waited for Erin to come over so she could see my parents and stuff. We grabbed a cab back to the hotel and met up with Dad and Davis and walked around in The Rocks and found a cute little patio cafe that we had lunch at. After lunch we walked around The Rocks Market, which had quaint little stands down the closed streets, selling everything from bread to fresh produce to chocolate covered strawberries, which of course Erin and I purchased. It started to rain some, so we walked inside the little shopping center and went in some of the stores there and bought a few souvenirs. They had some interesting stuff, one of the stores had authentic kangaroo scrotum bottle opener, yeah...? We also went into a shop with a bunch of really cool aboriginal art pieces. There was another place called Sticky, which sold rock candy, but a different sort of rock candy than you'd think of in states. This is like really small pieces of broken up "loli" or lollipop. We were lucky because right when we walked over they told us they were about to make some candy and we could watch the process which was actually really, really cool! I think I'd seen it on How Its Made or Unwrapped, but seeing it right in front of me was just awesome. After purchasing a few bags for myself, (passionfruit flavored, obviously) we headed out of the mall into the good 'ol rain, in which we decided we should find some cover, and apparently the only place to do that is a restaurant, and apparently when you're at a restaurant with Mark deVane, wine is involved, so we got a bottle, you know at around 4. Good times. Once the rain subsided, Erin and I headed home to shower/nap before dinner at Wolfies, a really nice place right on the water in the Quay. Erin and I both ordered ravioli which ended up being the best ravioli of our lives pretty much. Dad and Davis ordered Croc and 'Roo, both of which I tried. Here is my thoughts on them. Both very good, the crocodile had a texture between chicken and fish, leaning more toward chicken, and tasted reeeal good. Dad decided it was because crocodiles have the same sort of blood cells as chicken...who knows. The kangaroo was good as well, it's a tough meat, sort of game-y tasting, but still enjoyable. I preferred the croc of the two though. After a delicious dinner, we took some Christmas card pictures (or so says Mom, $100 she doesn't get around to sending out cards as usual because her life is far too busy!) with the Opera House in behind us. Moseyed on home, but not before getting a scoop, or in Erin's case two scoops, of the world's greatest ice cream, Midnight Cookies. This was in fact the best ice cream to exist, ever, anywhere. Truth.

Last Saturday the family went up to Hunter Valley, New South Wales' largest wine country. A 4-wheel all-terrain bus picked us up from the hotel, this was normally used for their Outback tours, but they were randomly using it today, it looked like it should have been lined up next to some tanks or something. We picked up a bunch more people and were on our way by 8am. This would have to be the earliest I've woken up since being in Sydney, 6:15, in order to get ready, get to the hotel and by ready for pickup by 7:15, grossss.
Our first stop on the trip was Reptile World, which honestly, I don't believe I saw any reptiles besides a croc. It was much more an Australian Wildlife park than a reptile park, but who am I to tell them to change the name. Anyway, we got to feed some kangaroos which was pretty exciting for the rest of the family since they hadn't done it before, I still had fun though. Except for the enormous emu that was running around. My fear of birds is pretty strong with parakeets, try imagining me with a bird that is actually bigger than I am! Let's just say I was not happy I wasn't wearing proper running shoes, because I was running away from that guy and hiding behind Dad probably every 30 seconds. I did not like it. We did get to see a joey this time though, which was pretty neat, but also strange. They hang out in their moms pouch with their head, as well as tail and legs hanging out the opposite side from their head. Very strange site, not what you'd expect, but I guess as they get bigger than don't all really fit in there. One was really little and fit in with just his head poking out, except for it looked like a really ugly chihuahua!

   

A huge emu following mom around, I did not like him.

 

Me feeding a hungry 'roo with a joey in her pouch!

After realizing we were late to get back on our 4-wheeler, we ran back and were happy to see we were not the last people on board. The next stop was the Convict Trail, which if you were unaware, Australia was actually an island founded by convicts, so there in lies the reason for a convict trail. It was laid by the prisoners originally back in 1830, and we just got to walk along it for awhile and stuff. Nothing too exciting, but the scenery was pretty at least! After hopping back on the bus (thats how I plan to refer to it from now on because I don't even really know what it was actually called) we got back on the road and then stopped again at a little cottage like pub that was famous for something called Dr. Jurg's Jungle Juice, which was port wine and brandy, not my favorite, but I was glad I at least tried it. See, I'm still doing well with the whole trying new things! Good job me!
Then it was off to Hunter Valley. The view from the top of the mountain looking down on the valley was breathtaking, absolutely beautiful. Once in the valley our first stop was Brokenwood Winery, where we tried about nine different wines, most of which I enjoyed thoroughly. We got a try a couple different types Shiraz, which if you're a deVane, is your favorite. Dad bought himself a few dozen crates to be waiting on the doorstep back in Naperville 10 days after he returned home. Ok, not a few dozen creates, but maybe a few dozen bottles, we like our wines! The fact that I'm positive those will all be finished by the time I return home, Dad bought me two bottles of their infamous Cricket Pitch Merlot, which was very good as well.

Hunter Valley from above

From here, we traveled down the road to an establishment housing three different places, San Martino Restaurant, Blue Tongue Brewery, and another winery. Lunch was delicious at San Martino, which was paired with four more wines, two red and two whites. We then walked over to the brewery and grabbed two flights of beer, a flight is pretty much a paddle with six holes in it, in which six extra large shot glasses are filled with different ales. We got to try all six of Bluetongue's different brews. I liked three, didn't like the other three, but who am I to let beer go to waste, so I finished them anyways, in the style of shots. Mom was appalled, of course, she isn't much of a beer person, and by much of, I mean really dislikes. Then we went and laid in the sun and listened to a guy play guitar to us while we ate our apples stolen from the concierge lounge back at the hotel. (And by stolen, I don't mean stolen. This concierge lounge was the greatest thing ever. It's got food and drinks all day long, along with fridges stocked with drinks you can take with you and everything. Amazing.)

 

Our two flights of beer at Bluetongue Brewery

Anyways, back to the tour, next we headed to Oakvale and tried about eight more wines, didn't like these ones as much though. Here we also got to try a bunch of cheeses, and a bunch of different olive oils. Then from here we went to Hunter Valley Chocolate Company, in which we got to try a couple different chocolates, even one with chili powder, which had a pretty intense kick at the end. Then we slept on the two and half hour drive back to Sydney.

Vineyards at Oakvale

Everyone was wiped so Les and I went back to Unilodge and the others went back to the hotel for the night. I decided to go out with Guido and Smat since I'd hardly seen Smat since he arrived, so Scott and I met up with Guido and Smat at Darling Harbor and headed to CargoBar, which was pretty interesting. If I haven't mentioned before, there are some pretty interesting characters our in Sydney. So Smat was just just a little taken aback by some of the people in there, mostly the dancing though, which is just a wee bit not American, and that seems to scare Smat. Hearing his thoughts on the whole Australian nightlife scene was rather amusing to say the least.

Sunday, Leslie and I met up with the rest of the fam at Paddy's Market, which is a MASSIVE flea market that is open Thursday-Sunday every week. It takes up the entire car park underneath a shopping mall, literally rows upon rows upon rows of all sorts of crap. One booth will be selling boomarangs, next to a booth selling underwear with cheeky sayings on the cbum (pun intended, I know, I'm clever) next to a booth selling wigs next to a booth selling fake Ugg booths. Probably any object you ever wanted or needed to purchase was for sale there. Mom got some scarves to take back to some of her co-workers, and Les bought some Australian shot glasses for some of her friends. Then we walked pretty far down Pitt St in the sweltering heat until we finally found somewhere to eat. After eating Mom and Les went to the Botanical Gardens and I met up with Erin and Smat, Guido and Scott at the St. Patrick's Day parade, which was pretty low-budge, but still fun. Hung out in the park for a bit, then walked back home so that I could get some homework and stuff done before the last dinner with the family.
The restaurant we went to was called Aria, which had a great view of the Bridge, as well as the Opera House. The place was super classy, the children came to the conclusion that it was probably the nicest place we'd been, and from our many vacations, we've been a lot of nice places. But this place followed all the rules of a nice restaurant. When taking our orders, he took Mom's order first, then mine, skipped Davis and went on to Leslie. Apparently it is proper etiquette to take the oldest women's order first, then the rest of the women, then oldest man and the rest. Who knew. As for the bread, no bread basket was placed on the table, though one was held out by a waitress who asked why type of bread we'd like and one roll was placed on the table. Come on, bread is like water to me, I'm clearly gonna need more than one roll! The menu was a bit of a shocker to us as well, with main courses requiring one to take out a second mortgage. Us kids declared that we probably were not classy enough to be in a joint like this! In addition, we didn't even know what half of the ingredients in most of the dishes were. Leslie and I concluded that the safest thing would be the beef tenderloin something or other, and Davis was adventurous trying the quail. As it turns out, best meal ever. The meat was to die for, and the truffle mashed potatoes...dont' even know where to begin. In other words, I should have never opened my mouth about this place not being any good, because it was great. And as it turns out, the chef has his own cookbook in which Anthony Bordain has a quote on the front saying "I will steal ideas from this book every chance I get" I guess the guy has some chops.

The rest of the family left Monday after we had one last breakfast. Les and I went back to UniLodge, I went to class while Les and Smat did some beaching. Bummer for me. Chill night,  I went  to the library for a good four hours and worked on a project with my partner Nick, then came home and watched The Office in Scott and Guido's room. I worked on some other homework, while Leslie did the drawing part for my project. Yep, my sister comes all the way to Australia and then does my homework. What a little sister!  

The next day was St. Patty's Day. I had a project presentation in my class, so I went and did that, which I'm pretty sure went well considering my teacher asked my partner and I if we'd practiced our speech, because "he could tell we had." We had most definitely not, but we did rock the presentation, then got out of class two hours early. I walked down to Darling Harbor and met up with Smat and Les and had some lunch then we headed to the Sydney Tower, which was pretty cool. Apparently it's as tall as 60 giraffes stacked atop each other. Yep, learned that fun fact in the elevator going up. It sort of looks like the space needle, and we got a nice 360 degree around view of the entire city. Then began our task of finding something green to wear for the night. We must have gone into, no joke, 30 different stores. Apparently there is some sort of law against selling green clothing? They didn't have it ANYWHERE. And then there was something, it was very not cute. Poor Smat got dragged along on this little escapade too, which I'm sure he was just thrilled about. He did get his 30 cent ice cream from McDonalds which he was quite happy about. I ended up buying a Celtics jersey at the sports store literally across the street from uniLodge. Whoops! Started the party pretty early in Guido and Scotts room with a bunch of us, and eventually ended up on King St, attempting to go to Kelly's, an Irish establishment, obviously. But the line was longer than 60 giraffes stacked upon eachother then fallen down, so we headed down the street to a place called Zanzibar, yep, the one from Tenacious D. It was a fun place, stayed there awhile then walked home with Les and Anna. Good day all around, minus Smat and Leslie jointly breaking my flip flop on the way to the bar. Thanks guys!

Celtics and Rabbitohs

Smat finally made it to Australia!

Wednesday we headed to Coogee Beach, a much smaller beach than Bondi, and entirely less crowded. I loved it. And it only took one bus to get there. We spent the day there with Erin and two of her friends. We got lunch at a Thai place called Chili Box. I'm not sure if this has been brought up, but there are Thai places here like nobody's business. Honestly, Thai restaurants are up there in number with Starbucks in America, just disgusting amounts. And they all have clever names like Thai Me Up. Love that one. On the way home we stopped at GYG and got burriots, had to show them the different between it and Chipotle of course! Then we took the long way home and walked through the USYD campus, which is absolutely beautiful.  I'd guess 90% of the buildings look like castles, I mean thats normal and everything.  I do not recall what we did this night, probably just conked out early, then sun takes a lot out of us.

Thursday I went to lecture and then hung out with Smat and Les the rest of the day, watched Inside Man and pretty much just sat around for the day. Later that night, Leslie, Julia and I went and met up with one of the Australian basketball players that came to North my senior year. Hello, random. We met up with him and a friend for drinks at a hotel pub and had long conversations about rugby (I now know everything there is to know about the rules of rugby, along with the difference between Rugby Leauge and Rugby Union), their two month trip to South America, and lots of differences between Aussies and Americans. It was pretty fun, but also weird because I wouldn't have thought in a million years I'd see any of those Aussies every again, and there I was having, having a drink with one of them. The world is too small my friends.

Friday a huge group of us all went to Manly Beach. Took the bus to Circular Quay and then the ferry over to Manly. The beach was pretty crowded, being Friday and all, but I wasn't that big of a fan. There were far too many birds flying and walking around and squawking around me. Not ok with that. Not at all. Ooh, and I actually bought sushi for lunch. I chose to do so all by myself.  I'm really branching out here! After heading back home, we quickly got ready and met back up to head to ANZ Stadium for the Rabbitohs v. the Eels Rugby League game. ANZ Stadium is in Olympic Park, and one of the coolest places ever.  The stadium seats 83,000 so you can imagine the sight of the place. The game was really awesome too. The South Sydney Rabbitohs (my team baby) put up a good fight, but in the end pull it out in the end. Bummer. But still a good night overall. We ended meeting up with Erin and sitting with her and her friends since half of my group ordered tickets ahead of time and so were stuck in a different section than the rest of us. The Rabbitohs are red and green though, which bothers me when teams are these colors because it feels like Christmas, and it's not, and I always want it to be, so it just makes me sad. Haha, clearly that is stupid, but its true.

Saturday, Leslie, Smat, Lauren (Guido's older sister who has been visiting as well) and I went back to Coogee for the day. We were literally there the whole day. They wanted to soak in as much sun as possible on their last day of Australia lovin'.  Now the last time we went to Coogee when we took a bus back and I saw a Maltese Cafe out the window on King St and freaked out! So this time we got off and wen to get ourselves some long awaited pastizzi, a Maltese delight that we can't get ANYWHERE in the states, which absolutely sucks.  We only get to have them when we go to Canada because there are a few Maltese bakeries in Toronto.  Pastizzi which are sometime referred to as cheesecakes by my Maltese family, are basically puff pastry or filo dough filled with ricotta cheese or peas (these are the two Maltese flavors that are original).  Turns out this one I found is the only one in Sydney, possibly Australia. How's that for luck. We went in and I got three, then when we left I got two more to take back. Like I said, ricotta and pea are the only two kinds I'd ever know about, but they had a huge array of flavors, clearly not genuine Maltese though. I had a chicken and mushroom which was really good, and a ricotta and fetta, absurdly good! We spoke with a few of the people working about Malta and our family being from there, and so I think he was the manager, gave us a few Tortas from Gozo, which are pretty much date filled tarts. After this we went home, watched Misery, then got ready to go out for their last night. We ended up at Cargo Bar, where Smat and Scott both decided to have a dance off with this really good dancer. Hilarious. Leslie got a kick out of the Australian nightlife as well. We decided we may as well walk home seeing as no one was really too drunk, and so we walked back from Darling Harbor, well most of us walked, Leslie somehow managed to get Smat to push her back in a shopping cart half the way. I already miss them and they haven't been gone even half a day!

So today, Sunday, Guido, Lauren, Smat, Leslie and I got breakfast across the street at Broadway before they headed off  to the airport. Now that they've left I've decided to get my life together! From now on, regular blogging (I know I say that all the time), healthy eating, more working out, less drinking.  Julia and I went to the grocery store and bought all sorts of healthy food, I didn't even go down the candy/lightbulb aisle! I bought a bunch of different meats, instead of white bread I bought pitas (which I realize isn't that much healthier, but they're high in fiber at least!) and lots of vegetables and all that good stuff. Instead of chips I bought multi grain granola bars, and even yoghurt, which I don't normally eat, but I'm gonna start! Ps, yes yoghurt is spelled with an H here. I also Skyped with the whole family, aunts and uncles and cousins and all. Took a nap since I finally got the twin bed to myself, sharing it with Leslie was NOT fun, considering it's seriously smaller than a twin. Then Julia and I went to the pool and swam laps then made ourselves a healthy dinner, and watched Biggest Loser, obviously!  And now I'm watching Friends and finally caught up with my blog! That only took forever. Byyyyyyye.