A Manly day

Thursday morning...

I got up early and took a walk down to the surf beach to catch some waves. There were several surfers out there and plenty of people exercising and running on the beach. I also saw a person, I can' t say if it was a man or a woman but I think it was wearing a skirt, who was walking a cat on a leash and collar. Well...walking maybe is generous, dragging a cat down the walk. The poor kitty didn't want to walk and then the "person" would pull the cat up with the collar so people could pet it. I guess that was our second crazy Australian person. We went to breakfast at our usual place and Tony had the veggie brekkie and I had the sweet rice compote, which was very good. We were talking to some people in the restaurant who told us there is a baby hippo at the zoo. I'd like to go there because I hear it is beautiful.



Laura has two classes on Thursday so she walked down the hill afer the first class was over and we walked down to the Corso to look for a watch. Tony found one and Laura bought a book about Australia. We went to lunch at Rumps and Ribs which is upstairs overlooking the surf beach. We had a great window seat and here we could share a meal. A lot of places say "no splitting meals". Laura had a cheese burger, which was very good and Tony and I split a steak sandwich. Laura had baby potatoes with sour cream and we had the chips. We were sitting there watching the people surfing and sunning when suddenly it started to rain very hard. Fortunately they don't rush you out of the restaurants in Sydney so we sat for a while.

Laura went back to school for her 4:00 class. We made plans to meet with Chelsea and her parents from Washington State for dinner at a Thai restaurant. We got there and they were already seated at a long table. The dad's name is Woody and he's an apple farmer, Sherry is the mom and Chelsea and a friend Lauren. The food was very good and the portions were generous but the place is very noisy. You could see the chiefs cooking and the food came out at all different times so you could tell they were cooking it right then. There were people lined up outside to get in. I think it was my favorite meal so far.

After dinner we took a walk and everybody got gelato or ice cream from different stores. We walked back to Chelsea's parents hotel and sat in the lounge area for a while to chat. They are leaving for a few days to Melbourne and then are coming back to Sydney and then to Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef.

We got back to the B&B and went to sleep because Laura and I are getting up early to go on a tour to the Blue Mountains.