Sunday, February 22, 2009

Last Day of Sydney

On our last day in Sydney, we woke up and went to The Anglican Parish of Christ Church St. Laurence, which was the church right next door to our hostel.  This church was beautiful, and the guest preacher was Fr Graeme Lawrence.  After the service, there was a little reception, so we walked over a little courtyard path squeezed between the two buildings and we entered a room with a book sale, tea, and little cakes!  Everyone was extremely friendly, asking us where we were from, what we were doing, and where we were going.  Of course, some cringed playfully when we told them we were spending the semester in New Zealand (there's a bit of a rivalry there), but they told us wonderful things about it nevertheless.  One man we met had actually grown up in a small town in Missouri and moved to Australia later in life!  What a small world.  We spoke to a nice lady for a while who told us how this church is the only church in Sydney that still values such traditional services and that it has the best choir in the city, and maybe in all of Australia!  She rushed us outside so we could catch the choir processing around the block (in the rain) to enter the church and sing for High Mass.  It was a beautiful tradition and we stepped into the service to listen for a bit as their voices echoed in the sanctuary.  This was definitely one of the highlights of the Sydney trip, particularly getting to meet such wonderful people!
On our way to the bus station, we stepped into a huge market that has a huge variety of goods from australian memorabilia, to underwear, to watches, to purses, to mixed nuts, to produce!  We bought fresh pears, grapes, a mango, and strawberries for a picnic and then hopped on the bus to go to Bondi Beach.  It stopped raining when we arrived, so we got to walk along the shore and avoid stepping on the many many baby jellyfish scattered around.  Mandi and I looked for seashells but there weren't ANY!  There was a South American Festival going on and a surfer rescue relay.  When we got back to Circular Quay, we walked toward the Harbor Bridge and found ourselves in The Rocks, wandering through an arts and crafts fair where we bought delicious buttery salted corn on a stick.  We walked up some stairs and finally found the beginning of the Harbor Bridge so we could walk over it.  We ran into some other Americans from California who were climbing the bridge, but it takes about 3 hours and I think they had to pay for it.
Back at the subway station, we bought some gelato, I got carmel creme, and we bought some wine for the evening, and hopped onto the subway.  The night before, we found out that many restaurants are BYOB so there wasn't a beverage list to order from at the Thai place.  Since this was the case, we figured we'd buy our own wine and it'd be easy to find another restaurant with the same policy.  Turns out, the Thai place was rare because we walked all over with our wine trying to find another BYOB restaurant.  Finally we stopped at a Japanese place who let us in with our own wine.  I had the white, which still tasted bad, but oh well. We ordered edamame and teriyaki chicken to share.
Yet another long, but great, day in Sydney!  

2 comments:

  1. Oh Rachel, to me it all sounds so interesting. I'm very glad that you've been stumbling across so many nice people. All your pictures make everything looks so wonderful, and you look so happy! I didn't realize your hair is short again, which I think is a very 'fun' and good style for you. So far I've found your posts to be really entertaining and fun to read (kind of like a book or something) so keep up the good work and I hope to hear that things continue to go well for you.

    ps- what is this australian memorabilia? I'll have to google it :)

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  2. I like those pebbles. I would like to stand on them.

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