The title of this post reflects how I think Heather feels the last two days have gone: in short, we purposefully did not very much on the Sunday, and today we tried to do stuff but failed, though I still thought there were some good bits in there. First of all, bottle shops came as a nice surprise. Whilst shopping in - wait for it - Woolworths (still going strong here, although it is a supermarket and bears no relation to the bankrupt American-come-British tack orgy), I tried to buy a bottle of wine. I asked the security guard where the alcohol section was and he said something along the lines of, "g'day mate, you'll need to pop on up to the bottle shop, its next to the shrimp barbie". Unconvinced, I headed back outside to find said "bottle shop". Lo and behold, just next to Woolworths was a little bar open onto the street with a queue of people protruding from it. The sign above read "bottle shop". So it turns out that instead of off-licences they have these little open bars where all the alcohol is behind the counter, similar I guess to rough parts of Glasgow, minus the bullet proof glass and questionable stains. I selected, to Heather's amusement, a South African wine from the list and got handed it in a brown paper alcoholics' bag. 

That was some time during Sunday. The rest of Sunday was taken up with repeating things we had already done. I had a swim in the pool on the top of the building, and had it all to myself which was nice as I like to splash around a lot. Heather blogged our previous happenings. In the afternoon we set off to grab some food from the covered maze of interconnecting shopping malls. We stumbled into a Malaysian laksa place and ate their tasty food. Then it was the on to the hunt for dessert. I bought a thing that looked like a square snowball called a Lamington, supposedly a famous Australian cake. It was filled with a lot of bright orange sponge which tasted like fake chocolate. I made up for my poor first choice by making a good second; a caramel slice with a good 2cm layer of caramel. H had a cannoli, as known to me previously only through the Sopranos, which was really tasty. On repletion we decided to check the Rocks out again, as there's a bigger craft market at the weekend. 

Heather with her mask off.

Australians haven't really got the hang of Christmas.

After revisiting the same stall a couple of times Heather finally got an obi belt thingy and I got heat exhaustion. Back at the flat I fell asleep, woke up, brushed my teeth and fell asleep. Sunday ends.

This blog, I feel, is going from strength to strength; each post seems to be more exciting than the last. What happened today, pray tell? Kayaking around the harbour, that sounds exciting. It sounded exciting to us too, so we set off around lunch time for a place called Spit Bridge. I'd taken up the morning by being worthy and getting a little bit of work done whilst H explored Surrey Hills and Paddington, nearby suburbs. Back to lunchtime-ish. We were going to try and fit in lunch at a dim sum place on the way to kayaking, but it turned out it was way off in the wrong direction, so we gave it a miss and re-fuelled on Japanese grub instead (Sydney, as you possibly already know, has a massive Asian community). We walked the now familiar route to the Quay and had a short wait for the ferry listening to the fusion of didgeridoo and deep house which was being flogged by Australians hoping that their heavy tans would let them pass off as aborigines. The ferry, as always, was lovely, and when we hopped off at the other side a bus was waiting. After telling the friendly bus driver where we were going he dropped us off in the centre of a suburb called Mosman, where we caught another bus with another even friendlier bus driver who dropped us off as close to Spit bridge as he could. A 200 yard walk down a fast, busy road and we were at the Spit Bridge. 

Heather having spied kayaks on one of the shores, we aimed for them, at first as the crow flies with H wanting to squat under some pontoon to reach them, and then on the pavement like normal people. On arrival at kayak beach we scoped out a two person sea kayak that we fancied and went inside to try and book it.

Unfortunately we were rather abruptly told it was too windy to kayak right now and would we please kindly f**k off. I have over-exaggerated his use of language, but he must have been having a bad day. Mmmm, we were now at Spit Bridge with not much to do. Moorings on one side and a busy four lane road on the other. We took a stroll down the moorings side and discovered swings, and then a giant spring, that I sat in. Time to get back.

Although massive splurges of buses were spewing down the busy road there seemed to be no bus stops to satisfy them, so we walked in the correct direction, which was unfortunately uphill, for about half an hour with no bus stops. This doesn't sound like much, but you are forgetting that we are quite pathetic. Finally a bus stop! We crossed over the road with the green man, to the accompaniment of the funky laser gun and drum beat sound that all the lights in Sydney seem to make. We read the bus timetable, which helpfully was just a list of bus numbers with no hint of destinations, and sat down to hail a bus. About eight failed bus hails later H was slowly developing a brain aneurysm and  I discovered that the "L" in front of most of the bus numbers meant they don't stop for losers. One, however, did stop, and instead of trying to get back to the ferry we sat on it all the way back into the city. At least we got to go over the Harbour Bridge. Having some cash left over from not hiring a kayak, instead of saving it we bought two fancy cocktails from a place called The Ivy, which is a swizzy complex of themed cafés and bars, and wandered on back to the flat for some Heather-made ratatouille.

Lots of birdcages hanging in the alley outside the Ivy. Distinct lack of birds.

END.