2/29/20
Happy Leap Day from Sydney!
Earlier Arrival to SYD
We arrived back to Sydney last night, a bit earlier than we were originally scheduled to. We had to return our rental car at Brisbane airport by 3:00pm, and our flight wasn’t due to depart until 5:35pm. We walked up to the Virgin Atlantic Assistance Desk and asked if by chance we could hop onto an earlier flight. They explained that normally it wouldn’t be an option, but because of some weather-something-or-other, they had been green-lighted to let customers get on earlier flights, free of charge. Deal! We gratefully hopped on a flight that departed/arrived one hour earlier. It gave us just enough time to grab a burrito for “dinner” (not sure what to call a meal at 3:45pm!) at the Brisbane airport before our new flight. At Paige & Doug’s prompting, we all agreed that it was the best burrito we’ve had so far in our travels! Mexcian food is slim pickings on the road :)
With the last-minute change we were seated in the very last row of the flight. I usually sit in the 3-seat row with the girls, but Doug sat with them this time because they thought they might want to work on a blog post with him/his laptop. I was in the same row, opposite the aisle, in the middle seat. I haven’t sat in a middle seat in years! I’m only mentioning it because man, it’s tight in there! It was a short 1.5 hour flight and we all ended up reading (Doug did some blogging too) to pass the time.
Reunited
We made it back to see Trisha & Ben at the apartment a bit after 8:00pm. Even though it had only been a few days since we last saw them in Byron Bay, it was fun to be back together and exchange stories of the week.
Saturday in the Harbour
Trisha & Ben left early this morning for Canberrra, a few hours drive South, for a hen part of one of Trisha’s close friends. So we were on our own for the day/night. We didn’t wake up until 9:00am this morning (all of us went to bed after midnight, even the girls) so it was a slow-going morning. After a load of (much-needed) laundry and breakfast, we headed into the city. Our destination was the Main Library to knock out a session of school (super fast, free internet) with the girls. We’ve been there so many times that navigating the public transport solo is a breeze :)
By the time we wrapped up school it was almost 2:00pm and we were all starving. We walked a short distance over to a big shopping center that we had been to previously and hit up Ippudo for some tasty Japanese ramen. It hit the spot!
It was a beautiful day, and we were in the general vicinity, so we decided to walk the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The views are just dynamite. Looking onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge never gets old. There was one massive cruise ship parked in Circular Quay, and another waiting off in the distance of the harbour. The girls were fascinated seeing the big water slides, wave simulator, rock climbing wall, etc. We tried to focus their attention more on the Opera House, and taking in, and appreciating, the moment we were having. I hope they always remember seeing the Opera House and being in Sydney Harbour. A truly magical, beautiful place.
Paige Wins at Marbles
As a quick side-note, we have a marble jar activity we do as a family. It’s a way to recognize & reward (and thereby incentivize) exemplary behavior. I first learned about it when I saw my sister doing it with her family. I loved the concept and started it up with our crew a year or two ago. Back at home in NYC we had a clear mason jar, and each of us had a different color physical marble. Any number of good, proactive deeds or words could earn you a marble. Key is that it’s something you do on your own, without anybody asking you to specifically. Anyone can “give” anyone else a marble, which is also part of the fun. Once the marble jar filled up we’d tally the marbles; person with the most marbles would get to choose a family experience to celebrate. We found it to work really well with the girls (us too), and was a nice thing to rally around as a family.
Physical marbles aren’t realistic on the road, so instead our earned marbles are captured electronically in a Google Note on my phone :) It’s a bummer not to physically see the recognition with the marbles, but the essence of the well-meaning activity is still there. We tallied our most recent round of marbles just a week or so back when we left Tasmania for mainland Aussie again. Paige was the winner! After some deliberation she decided she wanted our family experience to be burritos for dinner and a family movie night. Consider it done!
Zootopia for the Win
We ended up walking the whole way back to the apartment (another 1 hour after the 45 minutes we’d already done to get to & cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge). The girls were tired - and would have preferred to hop on the bus - but they were troopers & persevered. It was such a beautiful day that me & Doug couldn’t justify us going on public transport, just to save 30 minutes or so in time.
Doug detoured to a supermarket a few blocks from the apartment, while the girls and I went back to get a head start on the evening. The girls wrote in their journals while I folded laundry. We didn’t manage to figure out how to work Netflix, so instead we watched a DVD of Zootopia. It’d been years since the girls saw it, so it may as well have been their first time. It was indulgent to veg out over a movie and we were all loving it.
We had a smaller dinner of kale salad and cucumber rolls because of our late, big ramen lunch. Paige kindly captiulated to having Ippudo ramen as her “marbles family meal” instead of burritos, given we’d just had them yesterday. Icing on the marbles cake was some mint chocolate chip cookie ice cream as the movie wrapped. An enjoyable family marble night!
It’s nice to be back in Sydney. Hard to believe it was almost a month ago that we first arrived!
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