We kicked this morning off with a visit to the Sunday Market in Bangalow. I had read about it a while back in a NYT travel article, and was set on going. This particular market only happens in Bangalow the 4th Sunday of each month. Our travel plans meant we would be in the area over a weekend, so a Sunday morning visit was easy to pull off.
Perusing the Market
Trisha & Ben had been to Bangalow before, so they took the morning to themselves. We got to the Bangalow Market around 9:30am and wandered around for a good hour or so. The market had a bunch of small food & coffee stalls, but was largely stalls of art/artisans, jewelry and home goods. There were also quite a few stalls selling floral hair garlands, essential oils, crystals and the like :) The market struck a nice bohemian / hippie vibe with authenticity. It was super fun to walk around, browse the wares for sale and people watch. We nibbled on a few things for breakfast (gyoza for the girls, veggie roll for me) and got coffee (long black with milk for me & Doug, 50 cent “babyccino” steamed milks with cocoa sprinkle on top for the girls).
The girls broke off to paint some special garden mushrooms for Grammy to place in her Cape Cod garden! Grammy, make sure you act surprised when you get them in July! :)
Hinterland
The drive from Byron Bay to Bangalow was really beautiful. We learned that it’s referred to as “hinterland”, which are the remote areas of a country away from the coast. Beautiful hinterland! All in, checking out the Bangalow Market was an enjoyable way to start the day. I’m glad we went, but I’m equally glad we only went 12 minutes out of our way to get there :)
Japan: No Go
Back at home, I called my parents to officially tell them we will not travel to Japan in April. The coronavirus continues to heat up, and there is an increasing uptick of cases in Japan and unease on our part. Just this morning I woke up to a US State Department email indicating a raised risk level for US tourists to Japan, due to coronavirus. We were already leaning towards scratching our Japan travel this Spring, and that was the last straw. My parents were meant to meet us, but thankfully we hadn’t booked anything yet. They were completely on the same page. Not worth putting any of us at any increased risk of getting ill. Bummed that we won’t experience Japan together and see them soon, but hopefully the trip together will still happen next year :) Nixed Japan travel plan news aside, we had a nice chat (no video, WiFi in AirBnB too patchy) catching up with Grammy & Gramps. We’ll see them (and the Locarias) in early July in Cape Cod, so not terribly far away until we’re reunited! Hard to believe we will not have seen my parents since Egypt last October, and the Locarias since last July! Will be awesome to log some quality time all together.
Three Blue Ducks Lunch at The Farm
We met Ben & Trisha at The Farm, an 80 acre working farm with a restaurant called Three Blue Ducks (and a few other food purveyor/garden stalls). Three Blue Ducks sources the majority of their produce from the Farm. It’s a beautiful setting, with gorgeous, fresh, farm-to-table food and a general merry vibe. It reminded me & Doug immediately of our Outstanding In The Field experiences.
Crowd favorites were the roasted carrots with basil pesto, the garden salad with hemp & macadamia nuts, and the grilled zucchini dish. Yowzers! All were simply delicious. And the company and conversation were superb. The perfect spot for a leisurely Sunday lunch with friends!
Macas
After lunch we walked around the farm to see the animals (pigs, horses), flowers, bee houses and produce. The Farm is impeccably well maintained and it was a pleasure to roam around its land.
At one point we veered into a grove of pecan & maca (macadamia!) nut trees. Keenly avoiding the tall grass (signs everywhere that there are snakes, eek!), we hunted for fallen nuts on the ground. We took the ones we found over to a wooden picnic table and started to try & crack them open with a rock and tree stump. The girls were super determined (check out Sweet P's tongue sticking out!) to crack those suckers open! All the pecans we found ended up being rotten, but we had some awesome macas. Australia macas taste sweet and almost coconut-like. Not at all like the roasted, salted macadamia nuts we’re all used to eating! They were absolutely delicious.
See You in Sydney
Trisha & Ben left straight from the Farm to catch their flight back to Sydney. We said our goodbyes and “see you soon!” - we’ll see them back in Sydney on Friday evening. We’ll get a bit more time together before we skip off to New Zealand on Tuesday morning. It’s been so special to have so many fun, new experiences together and create new memories with Trisha & Ben, not only in Sydney, but also Kangaroo Valley and now Byron Bay!
Lazy Sunday Afternoon
We headed back home for a lazy Sunday afternoon. WiFi has been spotty at our AirBnB house, so the girls did a few pages in their Language Arts workbooks and wrote in their journals. The rain started (and didn’t let us) and we let them watch a movie. Pickings were slim! With shoddy WiFi, our only choice was the small collection of DvDs in the house. There were only two that were remotely appropriate for the girls . . . the original renditions of Annie and Oliver. Not exactly the “movie afternoon” they were hoping for, but any movie is better than no movie in their book :) So they settled on the couch and sat mesmerized through both (!) movies. They both agreed they liked Oliver better than Annie, but that they like the newer version of Annie that they watched in Portugal over the Summer with Tereza better than this original one.
Meanwhile, Doug & I tried to make inroads on blog posts, taxes and general life admin stuff. We made progress on some things, and struggled on others when the WiFi wasn’t cooperating. We keep remarking how we’ve had the worst internet connections in Australia, which ironically is the most developed, 1st world country we’ve been in since Europe last Summer! Funny how that works.
Dinner at home and some books before bed pretty much wrapped up our Sunday Funday in Byron Bay!
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