Nov 27, 2006

Exploration

Late to bed means late to rise. For the past couple of days Nicole has been working long days and I kept Squeaky up late so that they could see each other so that Nicole wouldn't have to go three days without seeing her.

This was accomplished mainly by going for late afternoon walks down to the Brook where on Sundays chaos rules. There must have been thirty or forty dogs being walked down there last night, which Eloise was delighted by. Also there was a "young man" riding his bike from the raised embankment by the bridge and hurtling straight into the brook making on enormous splash. The water is only about three feet deep so how he did this without hurting himself is anybody's guess. Maybe he didn't.

The happy side-effect of all this was that I had to wake E up at 8 o'clock this morning, get Nicole out of bed at 8.15, in order to get to Nursery by 9.

Bush BathI then took Nicole up the Stringybark Trail, so to speak, which is the name of the circular walk we do up at Mount Coot-tha on Mondays. It wasn't too hot but was quite humid and the dogs became quite hot. By the time we got back to Simpson Falls, sorry Simpson Pools, they were panting like... very hot dogs, and Tiny just laid down in a pool, which was like cool bath. We were a little sweaty by the time we got back to the car, to find a lost, sweaty German student waiting for us by the car. He said he wanted to look at a map to find out how to get back to the City as he'd taken a wrong turn on a walking track. I think he really wanted a lift, so we offered him one and dropped him off in the City. I think I managed to conceal the fact from him that I was actually quite lost when we dropped him off, but it looked built up on the right hand side so I expect he wold have been OK!

Storm DamageWe dropped the very hot and panting dogs off back at home then went to Latrobe Terrace in Paddington for lunch.

We found a nice little café where we sat on a balcony on a hill overlooking the city and ate a very nice lunch. The area was quite oldy-styly and quaint; there were a lot of antique shops, one of which had had its roof blown off in the recent storm, and quite a few boutique type establishments, and a bookshop. It was nice to see a new area in Brisbane, there seems to be quite a variety between the different suburbs like Paddington, Wilston, Fortitude Valley etc.

Needless to say, Nicole decided to check out some shops, bought a dress, and didn't try very hard but succeeded anyway in persuading me to buy some Havaianas which for the terminally fashion-ignorant are flip flops. They are totally necessary for beach activities as I am sick of taking off trainers and socks to go paddling etc. However I am not used to them yet and am currently walking around like a chicken.

Nicole bought a nice dress which I will leave her to comment further on.

We finished the day off, after picking Squeaky up from nursery, by going for a toddle up at the brook at sunset, then tucking in to pasta a la Neil with a modified nutty salad with roasted pine nuts, raisins and cashews. Yum.

No comments:

Post a Comment