Blonde on a Road Trip

I woke up feeling less ropey than yesterday morning by a country mile, but still not quite myself, so I decided to have a slow morning and see how I felt about walking out and about. I eased into the day with some breakfast and mustered up the courage to head into the city. The weather was looking pretty good so it seemed a shame to waste it and Michael’s lack of a garden forced my hand.

So I set off to the big city via the Tube at Lindfield station, which is only a 5-minute walk from Michael’s flat.

The trains here are double deckers, reminiscent of the RER in Paris and the trains in Amsterdam. It’s a shame London was built in such a hurry because I think it could seriously benefit from these at rush hour!

I caught the train to Wynyard, which would bring me out in the CBD, which is hugged by the marina, opera house and botanical gardens.

From the Tube station it was an easy, short walk to the Royal Botanical Gardens, which are a mix of a London Royal Park with their fancy gates and walls and guard buildings and an RHS garden with their biodiversity and different gardens and garden designs. There are so many lovely places to sit, whether you’d rather opt for a lawn picnic or a bench by a pond full of moorhens, coots and herons and masked plovers…?!

I carried on walking through the gardens to get to the spot on every Australian tourist’s checklist… the Sydney Opera House. A beautiful day for it too as it gleamed in the sunlight. In fact, as I walked up to it, a rather grand looking boat was on its way to moor next to it. There are plenty of people milling about and taking pictures, but it’s not overwhelmingly crowded. I guess it is a Monday…

I had a wander round and bought myself a thickshake to boost my energy levels and also compete with the heat of the sun. Armed with a nice refreshing cookies & cream thickshake from Baskin-Robbins, I went back to the park to find myself a nice spot to lie down on for a bit. I was still recovering and feeling 70% back to normal, so a little lie down wouldn’t do me any harm. I chose a spot on a lawn looking down towards the Harbour Bridge. And breathe… I could get used to this holiday malarkey.

After lying down and chilling out in the sun for a bit, I thought I might have a little wander around the park before I went to meet Lissie for a drink.

The time came for me to meet the mysterious Lissie, who I’d met before but couldn’t quite remember what she looked like. I told her I’d be wearing a striped t-shirt and she let me know she’d be in a white t-shirt and shorts… like everyone else. We decided to meet by Wharf 3 on the marina, to save too much confusion. Before too long we’d picked each other out of the crowd, said our hellos and walked round to a restaurant where I’d spotted a “happy hour” sign previously. We sat down, ordered two aperol spritzes and set the world to rights. This being my first drink in a while (relatively speaking), I must say, it did feel nice to experience alcohol again!

After two drinks each, we were both thinking some dinner wouldn’t be a bad idea and it seemed a shame to just go home seeing as this was her last night and I’d been a bit of a sad hermit crab for the last few days. So we looked up somewhere to go for ramen and landed on Mensho Tokyo. We both went for a garlic ramen, but in hindsight this was a bit ambitious. I could only eat half of mine with my shrunken and shy stomach, but what I did eat was packed with flavour.

We eventually said our goodbyes, took a selfie to prove it happened and went our separate ways at Wynyard Station, where I was slightly dismayed to see so many familiar-looking stations on one of the available routes.

I got back to Michael’s flat and he was still out, so I got ready for bed and settled down for the night. Successful day all in all and feeling much more myself!