May Sydney Trip

15.5.24

4:51 wakeup.  5:30 departure.  Stopped in Sutton Forest Maccas for breakfast and wondered if we'd missed the apocalypse - the car park only had a few cars, and the restaurant itself was completely empty.  Bizzarest thing ever!

The apocalypse

This blew my mind because this place is *always* busy.  The staff were quite old too, guess all the kids are in school.

Early fog

Rays

After Maccas the car lost connection to the ipad.  I finally started having a play with it around Pheasants Nest.  Of course I happened to be looking down as the Picton Road turnoff came up and we missed it (I looked up just as we were passing the air field).  Sigh.  So had to deal with M5 traffic all the way to Heathcote Road.  But haven't been down there in like thirty years though so that was nice.

Got to Mum's right on 9.  Dumped my crap then train to Sydenham.  Had a very slow walk to Westconnex (it takes ages when you stop every two seconds to take photos of stuff).

Old substation.  With plane.

Hubcaps

United

Tree fence

Garage budgie

Camelia bee

Near the Centre

Faces

St Peters Interchange

Colourful building

Mushrooms

Talk/tour was quite interesting.

Then walked back to St Peters.

Brick chimney stacks

Took a train to Museum (via Circular Quay and was super super excited to see the old Freshwater class Manly ferries running again!).  Got to the museum a bit after 14:00, checked in bags, then saw the Ramses exhibition.

Afterwards did a bit of a wander of the museum.

Sooty tern diorama

My favourite thing in the museum - the Bone Ranger!
Bone Ranger

Gypsum

Irish elk

Fishies

Skulls

Gymea lily in bloom
Gymea lily

Needed a drink after all that, so walked down to Hotel Sweeney for a couple of beers and dinner.

Hotel Sweeney

Hotel Sweeney

Hotel Sweeney

Then train back to Mum's and collapsed.

16.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Woke up at 5 for a bit then til 6:30.  Had a look at all Mum's Japan photos which was pretty cool.

Then went and played tourist for the day.

Train back to Mum's.  Had a shower then Luc and Cynthia came over (I was gonna go meet them at theirs but they very nicely came over to Mum's).  We went to Moim Japanese Kitchen for dinner which was very nice.

Moim wagyu beef salad

Moim takoyaki

Moim tempura prawns

Moim KFC

Moim oyster veggies

Luc and Cynthia

Catchup

We also went and got some ice cream for dessert.  A lovely meal and catchup.

17.5.24

Early start.  Took the train to go inspect my flat.  The tenant talked for an hour about her baby coming soon and their life there.  The real estate agent didn't seem to mind, I guess it saved him from doing other work heh.

Took another train to Martin Place and walked down to the Mint.  I think I went there when I was in school but haven't been in at least thirty years so went there.  There's not a huge amount to see there so were done by lunch time.

I thought I'd look to see if there was a Tim Ho Wan in Sydney and got very excited when it showed one in Westfield.  But when we got there we couldn't find it.  Had another look and on closer inspection it was "Permanently Closed".  Yeah thanks Apple Maps.  Oh well, had Din Tai Fung instead.  

Din Tai Fung lunch

And Krispy Kreme from the station ;)

Back at Mum's I had a look at her backups.  Syncback doesn't seem to have been working since her computer was rebuilt last year.  When I loaded Syncback it complained about not having any profiles.  So I made two that matched the arguments in the windoze scheduled tasks.  I set them up to "backup" rather than "sync" - which is a better option for retrieving accidentally deleted files, not so good for a disaster recovery scenario.  Dunno what had been used previously.  I also tried to backup more of her recent photos to my disk, but ran out of time.  

Then took two trains All The Way to the other side of the world (Brooklyn).  Took like two hours.  But nicely I could change trains at Town Hall so didn't have to cart my bag all the way up to the other platforms at Central.

At Brooklyn I walked up and checked into the motel.  Ok room, but a little dated.  And no soundproofing so I could cearly hear the pub across the road.

Brooklyn Motel

Brooklyn Motel

Brooklyn Motel

Went across to aforementioned Angler's Rest for a couple of beers and some salt and pepper squid.  It said it came with salad, so that was a lot more meat and a lot less salad than I was expecting!

Angler's Rest salt and pepper squid

Trent Crawford was there doing live music, old pub rock, so that was pretty cool.  

Trent Crawford at Angler's Rest

Then I went back to the motel and had some wine and did my nails while listening to Trent Crawford and waiting for the sweetie.

18.5.24

Slept fairly well.  Had a leisurely start.  Picked up some pastries at the cafe for breakfast.

Breakfast in Brooklyn

Then suddenly it was 9:30 and we still weren't ready so it was a bit of a rush to get out by 10:00.  Just made it though. 

Brooklyn Motel

Drove down to the marina to see how close you can get to the bridges.  Turns out not anywhere near them at all.  Sigh.

Bridges locked off

Brooklyn Marina

Brooklyn Marina

Then up to Rachel and Hayden's wedding.

Didn't escape til like 16:30.

Pennant Hills tunnel

Got home a bit before 20:00.  Had wine and chippies and ice cream for dinner then collapsed.