Sunday 8th June
I was up at 06.30, a bit on the early side considering I hadn't slept much the night before on my way to Sydney, but I had arranged to meet up with Sangita and Tania, the two Aussie girls I had met in Thailand in February. I took the train out to Blacktown in the west of Sydney and Sangita was there to pick me up and we went back to her house for a bit, met her beloved labrador dog Jalebi, and Tania called over shortly after. It was great to see them again, and good to see them on their home turf.
We took a trip to Featherdale Animal Park and got the chance to see some of Australia's indigenous wildlife up close: wallabies, koalas, kangaroos, emus, Tasmanian devils, dingoes, and many birds and reptiles. The wallabies, kangaroos and emus were free to run about at will, and it was a laugh to feed them and try not to be pecked by the aggressive emus (I'm sure they don't really mean it!).
We went for some food at a really good Turkish cafe, and we ordered what turned out to be a mountain of food: chicken, rice and turkish bread, and pide – which is similar to a calzone pizza – and it was all very good, cheap stuff. Sydney is a very multi-ethnic city, and this means that you can get a lot of different foods, made by the people who eat it on a daily basis (I never came across anything of this quality in London, but it is a big place so I'm sure it exists somewhere....I would just like to find it). Even though we were stuffed, we went to a place called 'Max Brenner', an upscale cafe which specialises in chocolate food and drinks. We had some hot chocolate and chocolate cake and, added to the Turkish food we had just before, made me feel like I was going to throw up I was so full! It was all very good but I think I over did it.
After spending a wonderful afternoon with Sangita and Tania, I went back to Tamarama and caught up with Liz & Iain. We went out to the pub and the guys had some food but I just wasn't hungry enough to eat anymore after eating so much earlier in the day. We went out to Paddington, an area which reminded me of Kensington in London: lots of nicely renovated terrace houses, gastro pubs and polished up boozers, and a generally young, affluent bunch of people. It reminded me a lot of a night out in London, and I could see how people from home might find it easy to fit in in Sydney.
