Sydney, Sydney, Lovely lovely Sydney

Yes, as you may have guessed from the title, I love Sydney, whats not to love. Firstly its Winter here and 16 degrees, bright blue skies & warm sun shine gracing my skin, so SO SO many shops in quaint suberbs, stalls, vintage & craft markets in public school yards, church yards & winding lanes. Adorable street side cafes, deli´s and of course cake shops. Mmm after brousing round one of the quaint markets above in a little area called Balmain, I happened to wander into one of these yumi cafe´s and purchase some Turkish cinemon & raison bread, which had cought my eye earlier in the day and I just couldnt resist a try. The lady lightly toasted it for me and put a littl lashing of butter on the warm toast, so it all melted and oooh it was soooo good, all warm, buttery, slightly sweet from the cinemon and gooey from the raisons, well, i would return to Balmain purely for this! Acutually, maybe ill do just that on Monday....

Sydney has an exhibition on everynight, well its a bit more like an art instalation, its called Vivid Light and basically they project images, text & pictures onto the most poinant buildings and landmarks around the city of Sydney, sometimes with acompanying music. The 1st one I caught was projected onto St Marys Cathedral, a huge gothic style cathedral in the heart of the city. It looked incredible, all vivid brigh tclours, text scrolling accross the centre, images of iconic people 40ft high, ever changing colours, all with the theme of history relating to that particular building. This was acompanied by a deep violin & digiredoo recording and large black bats circling over head, occasionally gliding accross the light path of the projector thus giving the whole experience a slightly eerire mood, fantastic, such a great idea.
The next night, after my day of exploring, I fould myself back at the harbour around sunset just in time to watch the night draw in over Sydneys impressive bridge & Opera House. It was stunning for those few minutes while the days orange & light blue sky melted into a deep bluey purple one with hints of yellows & magenta from amusement & harbour lights surrounding the bridge. It feels very surreal, having seen this landscape hundreds of times on post cards & tv, having drawn it in art work at school & now to be standing right here, pretty damn great indeed!

I popped into the Opera House to see what was showing and have a gander around, and noticed on the bulitin board that Vivid Light were doing their projections on the Opera House too, from 6pm. It was 10min too, so I waited and got photograhing like mad once all of these bright vivid patterns emerged onto the sides of the sails. My favourites were an orange & brown animal print & a bright purple geometric design. The sails & whole building together took on a whole new light & intersting glowing form. Its brilliant to experience such a light show, something so simple, transforming the way we see such an iconic structure - so So refeshing & WOW!! It wpuld be fab if the sails were actually painted in anilmal print! I think anyway!? Thoughts anyone???

This morning, on my way to The Rocks, a little area, just to the west of sydney harbour, I found myself walking through a pretty mall, so I wandered on in to a shop called What Alice Wore, or something along those lines, maybe referencing Alice in Wonderland. Well, a pretty black & white dress caught my eye, along with a couple of other things, but mainly the this dress, so I go to try it on and in the proccess, manage to get both shop assistants knocking on the changing room door offering my helpful advice & opinions, saying come out give us a twirl etc (Annie I could have done with your help at this point!) It looked really pretty, obviously, being totally honest, not completly nessesary for my trip, but having said that, sometimes a bit of retail therapy goes a very long way & im always looking for pretty dresses and rarely find them & actually, my total shopping budget in the past 10 months has been extreemly low, so, even though I actually left it on the rack and walked out of the shop empty handed, its on my mind now, and I think I will return there tomorrow too, and treat myself!

This was a very positive start to my Sunday, next I ambled up to The Rocks, I had actually intended to go straight to Circular Quay to take the ferry to Manly, lots of freinds along the way have advised me this was not to be missed. But, I´d read about The Rocks in my little free guide book and it sounded lovely and the weekends are a great time to visit such places as street markets are often in full swing then and all the people give the place a great buzz. It was buzzy alright, people everywhere, eating corn on the cob, cakes, popcorn, delicious looking wraps & drinking smoothies, wandering around all of the craft stalls, kids running about. After making myself tasty salads & picnicing for the last 2 days, I thought Id sample one of this lovely cafe´s delicacies today, so I purchased a wafer thin cut beef & salad wrap & a caramel slice, gotta keep my sweet tooth happy :) I ate half whilst sitting on a comfy seat in a sun trap & the other once I arrived in Manly and was settled on the golden beach.

So there I was, enjoying my ferry ride to Manly, sat in the open air at the front, drinking in the sun shine (goodness my pale skin needs this) when the man next to me pipes up some question or other, he´s about mid 40´s & english, we get chatting and turns out he´s here on tour, he´s part of Cat Stevens band (the other members are a few seats back) he offers me to join them for a spot of lunch, he´s friendly but I decline as I like exploring on my own and I have the 2nd part of my delicious wrap in my bag to eat on the beach. Then he says well if I would like to go to one of the shows, he can get me a ticket or a few if I want to bring anyone. I said this would be great, I think I was mistakenly thinking of Cat Power not Cat Stevens, (however I have since downloaded some on Cat Stevens music and of course know lots of the songs, think everyone does, but not really my thing, not enought togo see a whole performance anyhoo) anyway we swap emails incase I do want to see the show, say goodbye and off we both toddle in different directions.

Manly is bustling, its Sunday lunch time and the place is jam packed full of surfers bobbing in the water, young hip families taking their kids to the beach for the day, lots of pregnant ladies!? young teenage kids just hanging out with their friends, surfing, skate boarding or just relaxing in the sun, trendy couples strolling hand in hand, bare foot in the cool sand. Its so great to be by the beach again, I always feel a sense of coming home & tranquility as soon as I see the sea and set foot on the sand. I sit down inthe sunshine, let it warm my skin, eat my lunch and read my book, lovely lovely lovely.

I explored the botanical gardens, Sydney is still very green, and a lot of the land right next to the waters edeg is covered by parks and grass and the most magical tree´s, so that you can sit back and watch ove rthe bay with the obstrutions. But even the high rise fancy office blocks next to the harbour look all dazzling and cool, Sydney is quite slick but not in an overwhelming way.
Im off to exlpore again now before catching my flight later to the Gold Coast in search of hot hot heat and amazing beaches to kick back and laze on, ahhhh the bliss of it all, what can I do but smile :)