A feast for body and senses

Australia Day… We headed for Sydney’s Darling Harbour, arriving after seven to find it already thronged with revellers.

It was very much a family occasion with children skipping excitedly along the pavements, waving flashing, twirly gizmos.

We were booked into Crinitis, an Italian restaurant overlooking the harbour.

There were eight of us and we opted for the fixed menu meal for seven.

Through the windows we could see a monster screen towering above the harbour and showing the ceremonials.

On the back wall there was a screening of Federer and Nadal battling to get into the Australian Open Tennis final.

We made the mistake of allowing the waitress to take away all our menus and none of us had closely studied what we had ordered.

Had we done so, we might have paced ourselves on the opening course of breads.

Helpings at Crinitis are generous.

The breads were followed by two dishes piled high with pastas and one with risotto.

The gusto with which we’d started now was just “Oh!”

When we’d eaten as much of the pasta as we could, our plates were replaced with fresh ones, accompanied by bowls of salad. Ominously, there were also three cylindrical racks ranged across the table.

It turned out that they were supports for a pizza which could have been used as a body board.

The portions we took barely made a dent in this monster.

It took three boxes to hold the remains for us to take home.

While we enjoyed the food, no matter how huge the portions, the “music” was another matter.

I don’t know if there was a melody track being piped off to some other sound system, but all we got was thumping bass – “boom, boom, boom” – blending none too well with what was coming from the speakers outside.

Conversations were brief, shouted exchanges along the lines of “Look! Fireworks!”… “I’m going out to the balcony!”… “Okay!”

The fireworks were indeed spectacular, rising to ever-mounting climaxes of exploding rocketry. In between, lasers drew a sinuous symphony of light patterns on the waters of the harbour to the accompaniment of portentously droning music.

Just when you thought it was all dying down – blam! – the fireworks blasted off again.

Eventually it did all come to an end in a welter of explosions it would have been ridiculous to attempt to top.

At home, the BBC occasionally gives us a tantalising glimpse of Sydney’s fireworks displays.

It was thrilling to be there in person and experience it.

A rootle in the roots

“Can you see them?”

“Er…”

It was a matter of scale.

I’d been invited to look for crabs amid the mangrove roots beside the boardwalk. Even though they were bright orange, I wasn’t spotting them and had to suppress a people-pleasing lie.

Then one of them hopped, and suddenly I could see that we were surrounded by thousands, mostly diving for the shelter of tiny holes in the mud.

They had reason to be shy. Twenty feet away, ibis were stalking about, nodding their heads briskly as they drove their wickedly curved beaks in search of prey.

So yesterday we settled into the joys of tourism.

We lunched in an oriental area of Sydney, Eastwood, at a sushi bar.

I’ve had caterer’s sushi before, but this was the first time I’d sat at a sushi bar, menu in one hand, conveyor belt in front of me.

The illustrations on the menu were small; the belt quite brisk. So I soon discarded the paperwork and took pot luck.

Pungent wasabi made a good insurance policy against poor choices and all in all it was an enjoyable experience.

That the neighbourhood was slightly run down and shabby was a plus. It reminded me of the shops of Belfast thirty or so years ago before the developers bulldozed in with their homogenised malls.

There were wonderful vegetable shops which are surely going to receive another visit before we leave.

After lunch we visited the Olympic Village area where we walked through the mangroves and also visited the vertigo-inducing Brickpit Ring Walk (photo above: Architizer.tumblr.com).

A mention is overdue of the wonderful hospitality we have been receiving from Hazel’s sister Allison, husband John and daughters Jessica, Megan and Ellie.

On Monday we were greeted at the airport by Allison and Hazel’s brother, Joey.

Allison garlanded us in Hawaiian-style leis, which drew grins and cries of “aloha” as we spent some time getting organised in the car park outside the airport.

That’s it for now. Fresh adventures beckon.

 

 

Endgame

January 8, 2012

ChrisHarb Uncategorized travel Leave a comment

The end is in the beginning
– Samuel Beckett
Something had to be done. The symptoms were all there.
For a start, putting things down had become a time-consuming chore, attended by hesitation and exasperation.
The walking away afterwards bit would all too often be accompanied by the sound of something crashing to the floor, having been dislodged in the displacement caused by the aforementioned putting down.
To be blunt, we had fallen victim to creeping clutter, clutter bad enough to make life uncomfortable.
I could offer excuses and say we’ve been too busy over the past few weeks, rushing hither and thither full of seasonal bonhomie, to spend time on housework.
If we’d hosted some event we would have been forced to make the house presentable – probably creating hidden clutter –  but, for the lack of that, things just drifted.
No, that wouldn’t be the truth of it, which was that the process of clutter-fication stretched back much, much further than a couple of weeks. Some of the letters I filed during our tidy-up today were dated 2006.
We got stuck in for a couple of intense hours during which the question “Where are we going to put this?” came in a distant second to the question “Shall we throw this out?” (usually answered in the affirmative).
In a couple of weeks we’re going to be about as far away from home as we can get without taking astronaut training.
It’s comforting to know that on our return we’re not going to be crushed in an avalanche of rubbish.