Bundeena

Another day off, so I decided to take the ferry to Bundeena. It's a really small village that's surrounded by Royal National Park, and you can only get to it by boat or by taking a drive through the park. There's a lot of artsy people living there and no chain restaurants or anything, kind of like going out to Vashon. There are several beaches within walking distance of the dock, and I heard that they're a lot less crowded than the Cronulla beaches since you can't really drive there, so I decided to make the trip out.

The ferry dock is right next to the Cronulla train station, and it was so small I almost walked right by it! The boat is the longest continually operating ferry in New South Wales-it's been going since the 1930s. The ride to Bundeena took about 20 minutes since the water was really calm and blue today.

The beach out there was absolutely beautiful! There were only about 20 people total on a half mile stretch, and I couldn't tell if they were residents of Bundeena (there are houses all along the water) or if they had taken the boat in. The water is really calm compared to Cronulla since the beach is on a bay rather than right on the sea, and I was wishing I had brought along a swimsuit. Instead I just sat on the beach and read my book for a bit before heading back home. I'm going to try to go back pretty soon and take a look around the national park!

Horderns Beach

View of the ferry dock

Happy Boxing Day!

Yesterday was Boxing Day. Since there is no such thing as Black Friday in Australia, Boxing Day is the day where everyone gets up really early and goes shopping. It's also a public holiday (so is today) so I get a few days off in a row to sit around. Instead of shopping I went down to the beach near my house. When I got there the tide was fully in and the waves were pretty rough-there is usually about 40 feet of sand between the rocks and the water but this is how it looked yesterday. Instead of swimming I ended up just reading the paper and drinking a beer. Christmas Day was hot and sunny so one out of two days isn't too bad I guess...

This beach is a little rockier than the main beach, but I like it because it's usually a lot more quiet. Also the path leading to it is too steep to bring prams (strollers) and eskies (coolers) down so that scares off some people...

The sports section was ALL cricket today:(

Christmas Celebrations

This weekend was  the Christmas party for Hayden's work, so we got to spend the night in the city. Everyone here has pretty massive Christmas celebrations, and my work already had a lunch a couple of weeks ago at a really nice seafood restaurant in Glebe. But since Hayden DOESN'T work in the arts, his boss has more money to spend on hotel rooms, dinner, top shelf booze, etc. So I got to dress up and go out for Italian food in Darling Harbour on Saturday night. Darling Harbour is a really nice section of downtown with tons of bars and cafes. It's right on the water, and there's no roads running through it so it's really nice for walking around and sightseeing. It reminds me a lot of the waterfront in downtown Seattle, just bigger and maybe a little more sanitary.

Having a nightcap after dinner. 

View of the Harbour on Sunday. We stayed at Four Points.

Another view of the Harbour. It was kind of cloudy but definitely warm enough to eat outside.

Champagne and oysters!

I had a really good weekend but I'm definitely paying for it today. I slept for almost 12 hours Sunday night and woke up with a cold today so I'm going to try and take it easy for the next few days.

Messiah

I've been getting a little antsy since I haven't really been doing anything music-ish lately and my trumpet isn't here with me in Oz. Luckily the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs needed people to sing in the chorus for Messiah this month. Specifically they needed sopranos. So this alto decided to pose as a soprano and give it a go.

I've been rehearsing about once per week for the last couple of months, and we had dress rehearsals pretty much every night this last week. I really like my free time, but it's been nice having structure and places that I HAVE to be at certain times with the threat of consequences if I don't show up. I'm definitely on the younger end of people who are doing this-for some reason, a three hour long baroque oratorio doesn't appeal too much to some crowds. But the music is really beautiful and it's so much better when you know it really well and can anticipate what is going to happen next. Handel wrote the entire Messiah in twenty or so days. This is incomprehensible to me, and the best I can hope for is stretches of moderate productivity fit in between TV/Facebook/blog posts etc.

Opening night was last night and I think it went really well! The oboist was struggling a bit, bringing back memories of 7th grade and my brief and tragic oboe career. The chorus is singing it from memory, which actually was not as hard as I expected. The only song I need to review is "Amen". That's a five minute song with one lyric: Amen. Not easy. I'll try and sneak a few pictures from inside the opera house on Saturday to post.