Hello All! I hope you had a great Easter. I did! I enjoyed all my time off work on our first public holiday here in Australia. My “vacation” is continuing today with another day off because I work this Saturday. 🙂
We kept busy this weekend with a lot of fun things. The weather was great-warmer and mostly sunny throughout our break. Jax taught us to play Rummy with tiles after making us dinner. 🙂
On Good Friday I went to the Stations of the Cross at our church in the morning, but skipped out on the hot cross buns and tea/coffee gathering after. We took a bus and two trains to the Sydney Royal Easter Show. A huge deal at the Olympic Park grounds every Easter season. It was a combination State Fair, Rodeo, dog show, craft and vendor fair, and food extravaganza. It took us the majority of the afternoon to walk through all the booths and barns and decide what to eat for supper. We watched the dog show, horse gymnastics (people doing trick riding), and alpaca judging the longest. There was a rodeo competition between New South Wales and Queensland, a horse and cattle presentation, and an Australian country singer performed. There was a lot going on but everyone’s highlight of the Easter Show is the Show bags!! You can buy a goodie bag of all your favorite things; they are cartoon related, characters, candy, etc, various themes, and you get all the fun toys/backpack/lunch bag/candy/treats that go with it. Brandon and I did not get any show bags, but were amused by everyone’s enthusiasm for them.
Saturday, Jax took me to the DFO Outlet Mall and I got more clothes for work at a great price. I got to drive her car through part of Sydney which went well, due to lack of traffic. Brandon and I went to Easter Vigil service at our church, which went quickly since no one was baptized, confirmed, or received their first communion at our church. We then ate supper and hashed out our Canberra trip plans for the next day. The Easter Bunny came in the form of chocolate bunnies from Jax which was a yummy treat.
We took the first morning bus and a train to Central train station, where a coach bus the three and a half hours to Canberra with a stop at the airport to pick up more people. Not sure if it was due to the holiday, but Canberra was very quiet and calm while we were there. It has a population of over 300,000, but we only saw a few hundred during our stay, mostly fellow tourists. It reminded us of a sleepy, quiet, college town. It was nice to visit, but we were happy to come home to bustling Sydney after all that peace and quiet. We took a bus to Canberra Glassworks and saw a demo of making a glass paper weight. Right next door was the Old Depot Bus Markets which was full of booths of antiques, crafts, food, the, and more. I bought some cute cards and we had lunch. We then hoofed it to the Parliament building to admire the architecture and views. We visited the old parliament building and then took the bus to our AirBnB. I napped and then we walked to a pub for a burger and fish and chips.
Easter Monday we got up early to take the but to the Royal Mint. We took the tour and learned about the designer of the current coin art Stuart Devlin. Australian coins are awesome; they have Australian animals on them and include $1 & $2 coins. They do not have a one or two cent coin anymore and are debating to get rid of the 5 cent one too because it costs more than 5 cents to make it. We then caught a bus to the National Gallery of Australia to see their art collection and the traveling exhibit, Treasures of Versailles. It was really neat to see all the grandeur of the Palace of Versailles and now I want to go tour France. 🙂 We took the bus back in to the city center and ate a pita lunch, then went on a quest for dessert. The Freak Shake place was closed, so we had cake instead. Our bus to Sydney left early, but due to holiday traffic, we ended up getting back 45 min late. We kept ourselves amused by reading and playing games during the ride.
Today Brandon started his job. He is doing contract work in the city. I can’t wait to see how it went when he gets home tonight. I, meanwhile, had off and attempted to sleep in. It was impossible due them redoing our gutters and being loud on the roof. I cleaned the house, did laundry, and talked to my parents so at least my morning was productive if I wasn’t sleeping. I am posting this, going to eat some lunch, then going for my first Thai massage here. I have been craving a massage since I got here. I am sad not to have Ciara to go to and make my back muscles happy again, so hopefully the massage therapists here will be able to help.
Have a great week everyone and enjoy the pictures. Any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.
