Good Bye Australia

August 11 – China Town

After breakfast at the hostel we walked downtown. We wandered into a mall and did some engagement ring shopping. It was cool and kind of strange to be looking at rings. I tried on a couple of solitaires at a few different stores but nothing really wowed us. We headed into China town for some lunch at the little food court. We both had soups which were quite spicy. Mine was huge and I wasn't able to finish it so we got a to-go container. We got some Emperor Custard Puffs for dessert then headed into Paddy's Market. We looked at another jewelry store and I tried on another ring. We accidentally left our leftovers on the counter and had to go back for them. We headed downstairs to the market area and perused the souvenirs. We headed back to the hostel. For dinner we mixed up my leftovers with a bunch of vegetables and enjoyed our nice bottle of wine. The evening ended with watching Olympics again.

August 12 – Cockatoo Island

We had made tentative plans to meet up with Sarah and Lee Clayton over in Manly today but poor Sarah had come down with the flu and was bedridden all yesterday. Sadly we had to cancel our meeting. We were all really looking forward to getting together again. We tried to find a book exchnge for Beau but didn't have any luck. We then walked over to the State Library and got our boarding passes printed for our flight tomorrow. We were hungry and ended up searching high and low for a Subway. After lunch we hopped a free ferry over to Cockatoo Island where there was a big art exhibition going on; also why there was a free ferry. Cockatoo Island is a world heritage site and was once upon a time a convict ship works. There were lots of old industrial buildings that housed some of the exhibits. We went into one building that had a few different exhibits in it. There was an artfully done plasma cut shipping container with sand in carpet like patterns, a really cool hanging natural paper display, and a landscape painting that spiralled like a conch shell. The coolest one though had these fern lights that were motion sensors and would light up and move. It was pretty cool. We walked over to another area of the island where there was a large exhibit of paper accordion flowers that when folded were shaped like weapons. Upstairs was a fabric display which had different fabrics, nets, and notions hung from the ceiling, obviously I liked this one. We started making our way back to the dock but took another tunnel back. There was a very strange exhibit inside with little igloo coolers made into miners with black lights for eyes. We got on the ferry back to Circular Quay and took the free bus part way back to the hostel. We stopped into O'Mally's for beer and some wedges. We hung out at the hostel for a bit afterwards then decided to try out the Japanese restaurant next door. They had free BYO so we picked up a bottle of wine to have with dinner. It was pricey but we enjoyed some sushi, sashimi and miso soup. We decided to get dessert and had amazing wassabi ice cream with saki jelly. Yum! Our evening finished with Olympic basketball but I would have much preferred watching rhythmic gymnastics. 

Sydney Harbour

Plasma Cut Storage Box

Fern Lights

Natural Paper Display

Conch Style Painting

Accordion Paper Guns

Closed Accordion Paper Gun

Open Accordion Paper Gun

Fabric Display

August 13 – Leaving on a Jet Plane

We were up pretty early this morning to make sure we had everything packed up. We had breakfast and checked out on time. We were able to leave our big bags in the office for the day so we didn't have to worry about them. We headed down town to an ANZ and closed out our bank accounts. Now we had $2600 cash so we stuffed part of it in Beau's underwear pocket. We found a good exchange rate and changed some of it over into American. We walked down to Central Quay and took a bunch of pictures since it was a gorgeous day out. We got pizza for lunch at a restaurant on the main street and sat on their sidewalk patio. We both got a beer and pizza, Beau had seafood an I had supreme. They were delicious. We moseyed back to the hostel stopping to pick up sushi and some snacks for the plane. At the hostel we chopped up the rest of veges for an airborne snack. Our shuttle picked us up at 3:15 and we were off to the airport. Check in was a breeze and we went through customs with no problems. We still had a little bit of money left so we bought some green tea ice cream. We plane was half empty so we got to sprawl out over 4 seats. We both tried to sleep on the plane with marginal success it was about 9-10 hours till Aloha time.