Well, well.  It’s the end of my first week here in Sydney.  So far things have been great.  I was lucky enough to have an apartment in the Central Business District (CBD) so I have been close to a lot of nice restaurants, bars, shopping, and sightseeing.  I did quite a lot of working through the week but on Friday, Melinda arrived and we saw the town together. We decided to take the ferry over to the other side of Sydney to a subrub called Manly where there were having a Jazz Festival and open air market.  There are a lot of ferrys from Sydney and all of them take you out past the Opera House. This was my first time seeing the Opera House and it really is quite a lovely site. The archetecture is incredible and it did look quite different up close.  From the area where you can catch all the ferrys you can walk to the opera house and see a great view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

You can see all my pictures from the week, many of the opera house and jazz festival, in my photo album 2007 Sydney, once I have returned home and set up my album. Alternatively if you just can’t wait to see my pictures, come on I know you want to, well then you’d better just join Facebook and be my friend.  All my pictures are posted there! If you know my nickname, you’ll be able to find me! 

The jazz festival was fun, Melinda and I got to see a lot of cool bands and we really enjoyed visiting Manly.  This weekend is the New South Wales Labour Day so Monday is a holiday, and Sunday is the Grand Final of the Rugby - the two teams that have made it to this premiership are Manly and Melbourne.  So, this is going to be a big weekend for most here. 

We did kinda hit the town this weekend going to the Cockel Bay Warf for some great seafood and some really great spectacular and unexpected fireworks! Last night we found a great little Spanish Restaurant called Don Quixote, live music, the place was packed. It was my first time to drink Sangria, which is red wine, fruit, triple sec, and orange juice. If you are interested in making your own Sangria, there are some good recipie’s out there on the Internet.  Give it a try at your next dinner party - we sure will! It is served cold and is quite tasty. We ordered some new dishes and really enjoyed the atmosphere, the music and dancing.  We stayed till closing, then popped into a couple bars close to our hotel and had some beers. Along with a little shopping to round out the weekend it was an overall success.  It was good to have Mel around this weekend, I am very thankful for my wonderful friends and I will never take them for granite. 

Check back here for more picture in a week’s time. And more about my experiences in Sydney.

In Other News

Iron Maiden is booked.  We ended up booking two groups of 10 for each of the days. This concert is of their 80’s hits and we’re all very excited! Birdie can’t wait and we will get to spend time with our friend Blair as well - it’s gonna be a fun night.

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Mental Status: Feeling relaxed today, just watching movies in my hotel room and kicking back!
Best Thing this Week: Talking to my cousin Greg on the phone, and catching up as well as Mel’s weekend visit and our adventure in Sydney
New Book: Reading two new ones this week, by James Patterson of course, The Quickie, and Double Cross.