Saturday morning we woke up to beautiful sunshine. So after homeschool, we headed to Sydney's most famous beach, Bondi. They say it bond-eye, rhyming with bonsai, not Ghandi. To get there required a train switch at Town Hall, and a bus from Bondi Junction to the beach. Not as pleasant as the ferry to Manly, but well worth it. You can see what I mean in the photos we just posted:http://bdehning.fotki.com/2012australia/australia/sydney/
I'm just glad it is fall and not summer, because the beach was almost full anyway. I cannot imagine how it is on a hot summer day. I've heard it is just a solid mass of people, that you almost can't see the beach. For the first hour or so we just played in the waves and got used to the water. Of course Misa could do that all day, but I was tired of the pounding I was taking from the waves, so we rented Boogie Boards for the rest of the day. The waves were pretty big and one after another after another. I think because of the way the beach is in a bay, the water gets funneled in and it creates extra waves. It is the kind of beach I like because I can walk out a couple of hundred feet and still touch bottom when the waves go out. Anyway, the Boogie Boarding was amazing. Our plan was to walk from Bondi to Bronte, but we didn't get out of the water until almost 6pm, and didn't really feel like walking anywhere. After we got home and ate supper, a Harry Potter movie was on TV, so we were up until 11. I think except for maybe homeschool in the morning Misa would describe it as the perfect day.
Despite going to bed after 11 on Saturday, we were up by 8am on Sunday. That's because we went off of daylight savings time. We "fell back" an hour, giving us an extra hour of sleep, or an extra hour of the day, either one is a bonus. We decided to take advantage of the extra hour and nice day by going to Luna Park. Luna Park is like the old Lakeside amusement park without the big roller coaster. It even has the Wild Chipmunk (Wild Mouse), fun house (Coney Island), and old fashioned bumper cars. From what I remember the fun house was just like the one at Lakeside, including the sidewalk with moving parts and the huge wooden wheel that you sit on and it spins fast and faster until everyone flies off except one person. One of my favorite rides of the day was the giant slide in the fun house. They have burlap sacks to sit in so you don't risk any burns, and you really go. On the first ride Misa and I were getting set up to go down side-by-side when a Chinese woman came up to me and said something I didn't quite catch. I think everyone here must think I am hard of hearing, because the accents really throw me sometimes, and I'm always saying, "sorry?" Anyway, whatever I answered must have been what the Chinese woman wanted to hear, because before I knew it I had a two year old Chinese girl sitting in my lap for the ride down. The little girl seemed to forget who she was riding with because when we got to the bottom she was all smiles. I only wish I had a picture.
I'd say the rides are pretty terrifying for how simple they are. In one of them you stand in a round room that spins really fast. Then the floor drops and you are stuck to the wall hanging in mid-air. It is pretty cool. The kids that had ridden it before did crazy things like turning sideways or doing funny poses. Some of the rides were similar to what we have in carnivals in the US, but they crank up the speed or make them go completely vertical. They also make the rides really long, so you don't just hop on and ride 90 seconds and you're done. I'd say several of the rides lasted 5-10 minutes or more, which is a long time to be flung about hoping your head doesn't snap off.
Due to the end of daylight savings time it got dark early on Sunday. As we headed home at 6pm it was already dark, but that meant we got to watch our Sunday night shows in the dark :)
Tomorrow, April 3, is free Ben & Jerry's ice cream day. All of the Ben & Jerry's in the world give out free ice cream cones on the anniversary of their founding. So we are headed to our local Ben & Jerry's to wait in line two hours to save $10. It is a good thing I don't teach economics.
