Today we got our early Christmas present from Bo & Claire - a harbour lunch cruise! Jo and I walked to Darling Harbour to meet them both and we enjoyed a coffee at the new Lindt Cafe (and a few free chocolates too!) before we set off for our cruise. Once on board we were shown to our table, ordered a bottle of wine and then got stuck into the seafood buffet! Yummy!
Our lunch catamaran
After our selection of crab, prawns and oysters we all had some dessert before heading outside to the deck to take in the sites of the harbour. The weather wasn't as sunny as it could've been but it was hot and muggy and the breeze from the water was lovely. I took a few shots of the bridge as it is being set up for the usual New Year's Eve fireworks - you can see the big coat hanger before it burns brightly on the 31st December.
The Harbour Bridge, affectionately known as "The Coat Hanger"
After lunch we hopped off at Circular Quay and took a walk around the city, going to all the swanky places like Tiffany & Co, Louis Vuitton etc. Everywhere was crowded as people did their last minute Christmas shopping and the city had a real buzz about it. Bo and Claire bought themselves some goodies before we said goodbye.
I finally managed to pop over to see Lisa & Christian and their two twin newborns tonight too! Alishia and Sienna joined us about 2 weeks ago now and they are just beautiful. So tiny but so perfect. They are both doing well as are their proud parents :)
Tuesday was my team Christmas Lunch and I had been nominated to find the perfect location. I chose Sugaroom in Pyrmont, it seemed to meet all the necessary criteria; not to far away, water view, good food, and within budget.
We all took cabs and arrived just before our 1pm booking and our table of 16 was ready to roll! The restaurant itself is in an odd position right at the end of Harris Street, you would never know it was there but other people certainly did as it was full to the brim as was the cafe next door.
We chose a cut-down 3 course menu and I started with the BBQ Pork Belly with Seared Scallops and baby herbs. The pork was fantastic and although it thought it an odd combination the scallops and pork went really well together.
For main I think I chose the best of the selection, Pan fried Atlantic salmon fillet with crab & lemon risotto mmmmm. By this time we were making our way through the wine list and we had some excellent Semillion and Sav Blanc.
By everyone else's admission I also selected the best dessert. Everyone else was seduced by the Chocolate Pudding I went for the Chocolate 'Opera Cake' with hazelnut ice cream and creme anglaise - yummo!
Overall it was a great experience, the food was excellent and so was the service. The pesto beans with shaved parmesean we had on the side were stand-out and the hand cut chips looked divine. My only complaint was that at times the service was a bit slow but they were full and I guess it takes time to prepare and co-ordinate 16 meals at once. I'd definitely go back.
It's taken a while but this is my 100th post in this blog! Yay!
So, what have we been up to over the past few weeks since my 99th post? It's been all centred around getting the flat organised I'm afraid. Jo and I are officially sick to death of paint and paint brushes! After two full weekends of painting (8am to 7pm both days) we were absolutely exhausted that we both came down with a cold and I had a day and a half off work!
Once the painting was finished and I was recovering, Freedom thought this would be a good time to tell us that the decking boards we had been waiting 2 months for had finally arrived. Sigh. We had Jo's mum down to stay for that week and her partner Andrew came down to visit on that night, and what a stroke of luck that was! When Jo and I went to Freedom to pick up these decking boards (16 packs) we had no idea just how heavy and huge they were going to be. We only just managed to squeeze them into the car and drove home very slowly as the car felt like it was dragging along the ground! Andrew helped us lug these things up our 2 flights of stairs.
Now, as I mentioned how sick we are of painting and paint brushes, can you imagine what I had to do next? Yes, OIL the decking boards. TWO coats. Waaaahhhhhhh!
We finally put them down on the back balcony a few days ago and they do look nice, but god they should do for all the effort that went into them!
I am now working from home today as we had some guys come to rip up our carpet ready for our floorboard installation tomorrow. That all passed without incident but when the man came to deliver the floorboards arrived, by himself, with 30 packs of boards, 2.4 metres long, each weighting about 20kg we knew what was coming next. Jo and I helped the poor bastard as much as we could to get these things up our 2 flights of stairs and Jo made a rather cranky call to the floor place to complain that we shouldn't have to help with our own deliver because the shop don't tell the delivery people they will have to carry the materials up stairs. Grrrrr.
Artist's impression of how floorboards might look :)
The boards go in tomorrow starting at 7:30am, so we are hoping for an event-free day and that everything goes smoothly as can be. Fingers crossed! I'll post some pictures when it is all done.
This is just a random ramble as I'm a bit bored at work and thought I should update the blog.
This morning was busy as I had to present the outcomes of a series of workshops about how we manage version control with Tibco to the Technical Forum. The presentation went well and I was happy to see there was little debate and all discussion was positive and constructive. Hopefully we can now move this forward and have it endorsed.
I'm now facing the second weekend of painting in a row, but I think we will have pretty much everything done by Sunday. We also had new blinds installed today so we no longer have the bog standard ugly vertical blinds. Although, I have yet to see the new ones but I think I can safely assume they are going to be much nicer!
Our lunch catamaran
The Harbour Bridge, affectionately known as "The Coat Hanger"
