May Day! Mommy Day!

The day that everything turned happy!

Saturday, May 1, 2010
5:30 wake up and off to the terminal and waited for mom. Once the screen said that her plane had landed, it took mom 50 minutes to come out of the arrivals gate. I was getting worried! We stood there forever looking at every person that came out thinking it was her. It was super awesome to see her though, everyone was really happy. We waited in line with her at the Hertz rental. We got the car, and it was so awesome, the inside of the car was spotless. SO so different than the crap van we had been living in. It was beautiful.

Good Living Market first. We lucked out with parking right across the street, and it was a really big market, biggest one that we had seen yet. They had virtually every type of food stand that you could want. All sorts of foods, prepared and take home, ready meals, flowers, spreads, everything, and quite a few of the stalls had samples. We all looked for the lunch that we wanted to purchase, and I wanted figs, but you could only buy them in the trays, so that was disappointing. We ended up buying a bag of apples, olive bread, and a super super soft cheese. Mom bought some jerky, and I got strawberry tarts for dessert.

Justice and Police Museum. We almost had to park in a garage that was $35 a day, which was just insane, but we found street parking thankfully. We can’t believe how expensive parking is though. Its almost not worth having a car, at least in Sydney. And of course, Mom is surprised at the cost of things (besides parking) despite my attempts at trying to tell her before she was even here exactly how expensive this place is. But of course, no one believed me. The Justice and Police Museum was interesting, the individual stories were cool, but there was a lot on the gambling/casinos/prostituion rings, which could be super interesting, but the way they were presented was too wordy and hard to really grasp. It was just different than I expected.
Once we finished there, we walked down to the wharf. Mom got her chance to see the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House. As soon as we got to the Opera House, Mom turned into a little girl. It was really cute. She was giddy and prancing all over the place. She was taking pictures every few feet like she wouldn’t ever remember what it looks like. It was somewhat disappointing that we couldn’t go inside, but she was still in utter glee and kept saying how she couldn’t believe that she was there.
Hyde Park Barracks next. On the way, we made a wrong turn, and had to go all the way over bridge, and then get back, which took an extra half an hour. The Barracks were three levels, each floor slightly different. They had interesting set ups of views of things, like a table set for dinner, and then a video camera shooting down the images of food and hands eating as if the people were there at the table. Also a section on the orphan girls that had been housed there, and what it was like for them. I really enjoyed it overall. In the courtyard, there was a shelter and a plaque for the three kitties that lived there at the Barracks, only one was home, but it was super cute and loved the snuggles I was so willing to give it.

Outside the Barracks in the park, there were bagpipes and a huge group of people. We watched them for awhile, thinking that they would eventually march down the street, but as soon as we saw that they were Socialist protesters, Mom was more than willing to go back to the car. We got to The Rocks area, and saw that the same market as yesterday was going on again. It was hard to decide on what to get for lunch with so many options looking super tasty. So Mom and I shared a cheese and spinach crepe/quesadilla thing, which was awesome. And then we each got one kebab, hers beef and mine chicken, although I should have had beef since mine had only two pieces of meat and one of those was rather gnarly. But overall it was tasty, it was like Chinese food on a stick. Tim had a KILLER hamburger. I could have had a whole one of those all by myself. There really wasn’t any non restaurant seating, so we ate while sitting on these big planters, not exactly easy, but it was better than standing and trying to juggle the plates.

We went and found Hillsong church, so that we would know exactly where it was later and wouldn’t have to be wandering around in the dark. There was a Cole’s right next door, so instead of going back downtown and walking or parking in an expensive lot, we parked in the free lot right in front of the door. On to the hotel, which was huge driving drama. GPS wasn’t seeming to take us there at all, so I had to follow the map, which was really hard because it looked easy enough on the map, but what WASN’T on the map was all of the one way streets that we couldn’t go down, that we needed to go down. I eventually got us there, and Tim only went through one red light to do it.

Only one bed, and mom and Tim immediately started fighting about who would be the one sleeping on the floor. Tim eventually was the one that won. There was a note saying that the gym was closed until the 3rd (the day we leave), but I went to check anyway, and it was at least functional. Got to the church in record time of about ten minutes. It looked like a shady esque neighborhood, but the building on the inside was clean and bright and gorgeous. You could tell immediately that it was going to be super awesome and that I wish I could go there on a regular basis. The speaker was super intelligent and was one of those people, that you just wanted to listen to. His talk made me want to take theology classes from him. It went over the 90 minute mark and I thought my poor mommy was going to pass out. It was 4:30am her time. Back to the hotel for a brief dinner and bed for Mom.