AspiringNomad

Before you start, I apologise. This is a long blog entry. Sun burnt shoulders, Dad’s Holkham Hall hat, toll roads and a wine fuelled trip await.

The sun is setting after a long and warm Friday in Sydney. I’ve been thinking of ways to show my appreciation and express my gratitude to have such wonderful, loving and albeit slightly annoying, absolutely incredible parents! And what’s more thoughtful than the written word? After being smacked in the face by an emotional wrecking ball after reading Mum and Dad’s note left for me after we said goodbye, I was inspired to sit and write down just what it was that made the past two weeks so special. Maybe then I will be able to process all the incredible things we have seen, heard and experienced together and by some magic, by the end of the blog, I might be able to read it back without crying (happy tears, obviously!)

I’ll rewind 16 days ago to Wednesday 23rd October. Mum and Dad had arrived back in Sydney in one piece following their big east coast tour in the Spaceship! Fairly unscathed by their trip, with only one broken down vehicle and a jellyfish sting to perhaps a rather unfortunate area of the body, they were alive and well and I was so excited to be reunited with them! I left them to settle in and agreed to meet them in Neutral Bay at a pub called The Oak. I had heard that it was a nice place to go and has a huge Oak Tree that sits in the centre of the outdoor area. It’s huge branches spread across the seating area, all wrapped in fairy lights. I sat there with a beer waiting for the travellers to arrive. They almost didn’t see me but I did the wave that we all default to when trying to get someone’s attention in public and they soon saw me!

I felt like we had one million things to catch up on and the best thing was knowing I had a whole 10 days to talk about what we all have been doing. FaceTime is great, but there is nothing like sitting face to face talking about this, that and everything in between.

In the days that followed I unfortunately had to work which left mum and dad to their own devices. They met me for lunch at at Romolo’s in between their sightseeing schedule and in the evenings, we experienced the Mosman Oktoberfest, Mum cooked tortellini and they had some left over food at my place. It felt like it had been forever that we were sat in a living area together, with no pressure to really talk too much, but just relax in each other’s company. Something that seems quite mundane normally, but now, I won’t take for granted. Finally, I finished work on the Saturday and was more than ready for some time off. We had a solid plan for the week ahead and I met them at their Mosman residence for some pasta. Mosman is a lovely residential suburb in northern Sydney. The houses are well kept and the shops are a little more upmarket. As we walked along one particular street at dusk, I was blown away (again) at another view of the city. The steep decline of the road forced the houses to fold down the curve of the horizon revealing the lights of the buildings in the city centre across the harbour. The sky, a pink, purple and orange backdrop. It’s not always obvious but every now and again you’ll see a view of Sydney from a different perspective and it just confirms how beautiful this city is and I get to fall in love with it all over again.

Sunday morning started at Zen Day Spa. Mum and I enjoyed a full body massage while Dad returned to an Art Gallery that they didn’t get chance to finish exploring the previous day. We arranged to meet Dad at the Botanical Gardens afterwards. Classically, Dad’s phone was low on power and so to make life easy, we decided to meet him at the gallery. But of course that would have been to easy. I received a text from Dad saying he could see us at the Harbour on Life 360 and would come meet us. As we slowly walked in the direction of the gallery (thinking he would track us) Dad waltz his way straight to the harbour. About 15mins later… we still hadn’t crossed paths. Mum and I left the indoor palm garden in search of Dad to find him a little further down the path looking for us! We rolled our eyes at how typically unnecessary this had all been, but reunited, we headed back to circular quay. Mum and Dad were checking into their new accommodation today and so picked their luggage up from mine and headed over south of the CBD to the slightly more modest suburb of Surry Hills. Amongst it’s many eateries, up and coming restaurants, edgy bars and slightly alternative shops, typically, mum and dad had managed to find themselves nestled in to an area of Surry Hills renowned for its homelessness! They lugged their belongings across the city, up and down the hills of Surry, past the soup kitchen, and eventually into their new apartment. I joined them later that evening for an eye opening shop at their local Coles. Realising I was being completely ripped off at my local grocery stores, I must have sounded like a mad woman, ‘I can’t believe that!’ ‘$2 for blueberries!’ ‘Wait, let me check the price of the Nutella!’ I find that Nutella is always a good indication as to the level of supermarket I am dealing with. Safe to say I haven’t purchased Nutella since moving from Chippendale to Kirribili! That evening, Mum put together another delicious meal. We listened to Dads selection of music through the TV as we couldn’t get the speaker to connect to our phones and chatted over some wine that Dad spent rather a long time choosing at the Bottle-O.

Monday morning soon came around and I met Mum and Dad at Circular Quay. The sun was shining and I had requested that we go to the Opera Bar that looks out on to the harbour. I finally got round to having a Lemon, Lime and Bitters and we spent some time people watching before hopping on a ferry to Rose Bay. It’s a suburb that I knew I wanted to take Mum and Dad. I personally really like the vibe of the place, laid back with a few shops full of lovely things that I can’t afford. There’s a quaint little alley way which they claim as being a ‘little Italy’. Perhaps a little far fetched, but it was nice enough to take a couple of photos as we wandered past. After a bite to eat at a cafe, we walked to the beach and sat for a while in the sun. I had suggested to head up to Watsons Bay to a viewpoint on the rocks and so we grabbed a bus that takes you all the way up to the southern tip of the mouth where the Pacific Ocean meets Sydney Harbour. Past the nudest beach and up some steps to the rocks, although it had clouded over, the view was still amazing and fortunately their were no nude bodies in sight! Dad then got out his map and we tried to get our bearings of where Mum and Dad had been on their walks when they were in Mosman which was across the harbour. We made our way back to the ferry wharf and saw a huge Pelican, suspiciously confident hanging outside a restaurant. I think he knew exactly what he was doing! Unfortunately, I had made an error with the ferries and we completely missed the one that we needed to catch back to circular quay. Plan B had us back on a bus to Edgecliff where we jumped off and caught the train to our respective homes. As if we hadn’t done enough already, we freshened up and headed to Bargain Car Rentals to pick up our trusty car for the next few days. Despite the heavens opening on our way over, we successfully collected the car with surprisingly little stress! In we hopped, and headed back to Surry Hills to call it a day.

Tuesday morning started nice and early. Mum and Dad arrived at 7:30am sharp to begin our journey to Hunter Valley. It’s somewhere I have wanted to go to before even arriving in Australia and I had only heard good things about other peoples experiences there. Dad was behind the wheel with Mum in the passenger seat and I was making myself comfortable in the back. We navigated our way north, attempting to avoid as many tolls as possible. By 10am we had reached the wine country and for the last 30mins of the journey, we were heading down country roads with fields either side with horses and cows. Perhaps my judgement is now a little off but it felt rather similar to the landscapes at home. Although maybe a few more deadly snakes in the grass!

We pulled up at an opening at the top of a field of vines, home to the Pokolbin Brothers Winery/Grapemobile bike hire. There was a large garage with a corrugated tin roof, filled with electric bikes, boxes, large glass bottles, aman named Glen and a sample of his Moscato wine! Glen is an eccentric, chatty man in his 60s who had many questionable anecdotes and shared maybe a little too much with us considering we were just there to pick up 3 electric bikes! Although he could talk for Australia, he was kind and gave us lots of ideas of where to go to that day. Eventually, 1 hour eating into our precious wine drinking time and after Mum had been instructed to ‘keep her head straight’ for the photo, we were off towards our first vineyard, Tamburlaine.

We were slightly unsure of how the wine tastings would work but the lady in Tamburlaine soon made it clear that it was a very laid back exercise of ‘you tell me which ones you want to try, and I’ll pour’. This made it very relaxed and we enjoyed sampling a few of their finest before feeling obliged to purchased one of their reds. I guess that’s how they get you!

We headed for lunch and a further two vineyards; Audrey Wilkinson, where mum was attempting to pay for the $12 wine tasting with her Opal card and McLeish Winery, where they had so much wine to offer us we simply didn’t have time to finish the list before having to head off and race back to Pokolbin Brothers to return the bikes for 5pm. Unfortunately that meant Dad had to sit and suffer through the tasting of about 6 White Wines at which point we had to leave and we only had time for one red! We had a whale of a time cycling down the country roads with spectacular views, some exceptional wines and some that were not so good, we saw Galah’s, lorikeets and cows, as we trundled alongside one another. We were welcomed back to Pokolbin Brothers by Glen who offered us even more wine, it would have been rude to have said no!? We entertained Glen some more and tried to seem appropriately impressed by his stories, but it was time to say goodbye and head off to our stay for the night. Legend has it Glen is still talking behind his bar to this day!

Just down the road we arrived at Hermitage Lodges. We missed the check in but they left our room key in a lock safe and we dumped all our belongings in the room. Quite literally all of Mum and Dads belongings as they had decided to take all 4 of their suitcases with us for a one night stay! Dad was cracking in to another bottle of wine and I couldn’t believe I was saying it, but I was well and truly wined-out for the day and couldn’t handle another drop! We sat on the veranda looking out to the little vineyard which sat in the centre of all the lodges. The sun was going down but it was still beautifully warm. The areas of the hotel were well kept with lots of shrubs and flowers in the boarders. Our little lodge was well equipped and was a nice change from our accommodation in Sydney. After recuperating for a while, we decided to head into the main town of Pokolbin. Now, Pokolbin we can assume, is a bit of a makeshift town that has been set up to accommodate the people who had started businesses up here and now the tourists that come to visit. However, that means that it is lacking in any sort of character. In huge contrast to the beautiful places we had visited during the day, we ended up at an Irish pub which was similar to a Whetherpoons for some food. A burger each and a soft drink went down nicely and we headed back to the lodge for a good night sleep.

On Wednesday morning we slowly woke up and Dad bought me a cup of tea in bed. (Something that I had also forgotten that I had massively taken for granted back home). We had some breakfast that consisted of thick yoghurt with granola and a passion fruit compote. The sun blared down on the veranda and as much as we tried to stick it out, we had to retreat to the shade! I took to the wheel this time and we began our journey back to the big city. Just as we were leaving the wine country, the kangaroos made an appearance and as a parting gift, stayed in our view for some time before hopping off into the distance! We stopped for fuel and snacks on the way and made it back in fairly good time. I didn’t want two spare pairs of hands and a car to go to waste, and so I took Mum and Dad to what I am sure was the most exciting place on their trip, Bunnings. Think, B&Q on steroids. We’re talking, power tools, timber, construction worker wear and construction worker footwear (a whole isle dedicated for it!) There are carpets, kitchens, outdoor furniture, BBQs, roofing, fences and they even do a Sausage Sizzle every Saturday and Sunday where you can go and get yourself a hotdog in the car park! So we trundled off to Alexandria and picked up a two seater bench for my balcony. Dad and I then headed to another Bunnings to get the matching coffee table and on return, Mum and Dad got to work on fixing a few things in my places that needed a bit of TLC.

After a whole week together we finally decided we needed a little space! So mum and Dad headed back to Surry Hills and I sorted a few things out at mine and enjoyed an evening on my new balcony furniture! Thursday morning was another early start. We met in Surry Hills and drove out west to The Blue Mountains. So called due to the particles that come from the abundance of eucalyptus trees that create a blue haze in the air. En route Dad and I thought that there may have been a problem with the tyres due to an annoying, continuous high pitched noise that we could hear. Mum thought that it was the cicadas but we laughed that off until we pulled up into the car park and opened our doors to a sounds that travelled into your brain and around your body at an uncomfortable frequency that made us close the doors straight back up again! After questioning whether we should just go home because it was so loud (it really was deafening). We had our homemade sandwiches (Egg, tomato and avocado) and began the Grand Canyon Trek. It took us about 3hrs to walk down a decline of 200m, through the tropical canyon and under a small waterfall, walk back up to get a breathtaking view of the canyon from up high and walk back to the car. By 3pm we were on our way back to Bargain Car Rentals to drop off our trusty MG SUV, which as it happened, didn’t have anything wrong with it’s tyres! On our way back to the Surry Hills residence, we stopped at a Turkish take away restaurant to fill up on donna meat and falafels, all washed down with of course more wine! I may have got my evenings in a muddle, but I believe it was this night that we headed to a pub called The Forresters. It was a lively pub that I had been to before but thought it would be a nice place for us all to go to when Mum suggested it. That was until I confidently took a step inside and turned around to Mum and Dad. I quickly realised that although we could have sat inside, they wouldn’t have been able to hear each other above the DJ! Luckily, there were some seats outside the front and so we got ourselves comfortable and had a beer before calling it a night.

Sydney weather gifted us with a glorious Friday. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. Mum and Dad met me in Kirribilli and I took them to The Flying Bear cafe. It’s nestled in the corner of Kirribilli bay and at the bottom end of Milsons Park. We sat in the sun, people watching (which is something to behold), and then headed to two gardens that Mum had read about online. One in Milsons Point and one in Cremorne. Being spring time over here, the flowers were just blooming, the trees are all green and the smells were so fresh. Both gardens were little snippets of paradise, hidden in the suburbs of a busy city, cared for by the people in the community. After loosing Dad then finding him again, we sat on a bench at the end of Cremorne point. While waiting for our ferry, we messed around in the outdoor gym at a park nearby and Mum and Dad tried their best at some exercises which gave us all a laugh! Back in Surry Hills, mum put together another delicious meal of Quiche, pasta, salad and of course, more wine!

I realise this is a very long blog, so if you’re still with me, congratulations. We have reached the day of Dads surf lesson at the infamous Bondi Beach! Renowned for its big waves and golden sand, the iconic Bondi Beach draws surfers in far and wide. But today was special because Dad was going to be amongst them. An activity many can only dream about, Dad was actually going to be able to do! We started the day at the Glebe markets and met in a little cafe for some coffee while we hoped the rain would pass. Unfortunately, we had ran out of luck with the weather. Each with an umbrella to hand, we wandered through the market stalls and then went to The Rocks Saturday Market which sits just beneath the Harbour Bridge to peruse some more. Mum had a Rhubarb and Custard Donut while I indulged in a Cinnamon Churro stick (and some fudge) and Dad had a Tandoori Chicken wrap. Feeling a little uninspired by both the markets and the weather, it was time to head to Bondi. About 1hr on the bus and we were there. While Dad was getting suited and booted, Mum and I found a comfy spot on a bench up on the promenade. We enjoyed watching Dad heave his 9ft surf board (yes, you read that correctly) into the water and attempt to stand up as the waves rolled in. If it wasn’t for the dire weather, we may have witnessed the time that Dad did manage to stand up on the board. However, after about one hour, Mums fingers started to go white and although Dad was comfortable in the water, we may as well have been sat huddled on Cromer Pier! Our umbrellas were up to shelter from the wind and spits of rain and we were getting rather annoyed of shivering. Reluctantly, we retreated to a restaurant and ordered some hot chips (that is legitimately what they call them here but we know them as fries or just, chips) and a drink. Another hour on, Dad came to meet us with a big smile on his face, although I am sceptical as to whether he did ever manage to stand up on the board, there was no doubt he really enjoyed his time in the water!

I made a quick dash for home to have a nice warm shower and warm up and left Mum and Dad in the Bondi Active shop for him to buy a t shirt. Later that evening we met at the Eveleigh, a pub in Chippendale that always seemed bustling as I used to walk past but never got the chance to try out.

Dad was able to tell me about his troubles with the 9ft board, and how it was better than the alternative 6ft board which just sunk beneath him as he tried to catch the wave! Dad had befriended everyone in his surf group and even got invited to go out with them that evening! Of course, we already had plans, so much to Dad’s dismay, he had to decline! We had booked a table at Kindred. Probably my most favourite restaurant in Sydney to date, and one that we didn’t have to walk a marathon to get to. We indulged in bread, olives, triangoli, stuffed aubergine, cavatelli and of course, some wine! It was my most favourite meal of their visit and I thoroughly enjoyed our evening together.

Sunday rolled around nicely and I have to admit, I was slightly hungover. Despite that, I was up and ready to meet my friend in Kirribilli at 9:00am to head to the market that we managed to miss last time we met up. That afternoon I met Mum and Dad down in Little Bay beach. It was slightly further than I had first thought and so after 1hr 45mins on public transport, I was pretty disappointed to see that the sun had disappeared behind the cloud. A sunny Sunday morning had bought the weekend crowd to the beach and since the sun had given up on us, we all felt a little silly lying in the sun that didn’t exist and to be completely honest, we were freezing! We held out until about 4pm before giving in and heading back to Surry Hills. I enjoyed a little nap and we decided to order an Indian takeaway for dinner as it was something that we had spoken about fancying all week! As much as I was enjoying my evening, I was fully aware that this was the last dinner I was to have with Mum and Dad before they jet off back to the UK. A little notch in my stomach has been present throughout their whole visit as I was well aware that this wonderful time was going to come to an end but rather than ignoring it, it was time to accept that the time we have had together was amazing, and I am incredibly lucky to have been able to experienced it with them, no matter how hard goodbyes are, there’ll always be a next time.

Monday morning had finally arrived and Mum and Dad checked out of their accommodation. They hauled all there luggage back across Sydney, away from the homeless! Without much planned for the day, we got something to eat and took a stroll across the bridge and went into the Australian Hotel. Apparently the oldest hotel in Sydney. One that Mum and Dad had visited on their first couple of days in Australia and one that Becky has also been to about 10 years ago! We found some cosy seats in the rooftop area. The view wasn’t that good, it was raining and we were the only people up there, but somehow it was atmospheric and warm, and a perfect little hide out for that afternoon. After a while, the sun started to shine and before long it was time to make our way back to my place.

Writing about the end of our time together in Sydney is harder than I expected, so please, bare with me. We spent a little bit of time on my balcony and I got myself ready for my Aerial Class. The plan was to leave my spare keys with Mum and Dad so they could organise themselves at their leisure before having to go to the airport. Airport goodbyes are much too emotional for a Monday evening and so we saved the heartfelt farewell for the privacy of my place. It goes without saying how hard goodbyes can be and so at risk of bringing everyone who reads this to tears, I think I might gloss over it!

Over the last 5 weeks, I’ve learnt that your never too old to be embarrassed by your parents. That Bill Bryson is one of Dad’s favourite authors. That Sydney has 658 suburbs and Mosman is a really nice one. That I definitely drink more wine with my parents than anyone else. That I have a niche hatred for cruise ships. That one broccoli floret for dinner is definitely not enough. That the Sydney harbour bridge was designed by the English. That navigating through cities in a car with Mum and Dad will never not be stressful! That eating food prepared by Mum while listening to music chosen by Dad through a TV set might be one of my most favourite moments of the year. That it really doesn’t matter wherever it is, whatever your doing, spending time with your parents, is simply the best.