Art

Woke to slightly brighter skies, although there was still some water from yesterday’s rain lingering on the balcony. We messaged the host and did some washing and planning for the day then set off to walk via Wooloomoolloo to the NSW art gallery. We thought we’d pass a little bakery or coffee shop en route as we’ve run out of bread for breakfast, but no luck, so we had some coffee and fruit toast with ricotta and honey at the gallery’s cafe and very nice it was too. Suitably refreshed we wandered around the gallery, exploring and enjoying the activist art, the Australian collection and the building itself (which is being massively extended and updated so will be even better in a couple of years I suspect). I loved the Brett Whiteley (bottom right) of a woman in a bath, but they weren’t showing his painting of the opera house which I’d wanted to see, nor did they have it in the shop unfortunately.
Once we were done in the gallery we walked across to the CBD, getting a great view of the city skyline as we went across the park, then caught the train to Bondi Junction where we explored the shops (and I bought a lovely plate with Prego written on it which made us laugh as I’ve been teaching K Italian this week and although we’ve mainly been talking about sea creatures she knows Prego from a meal we had in Italy some years ago where the little Nonna serving us said Prego non stop throughout the evening as she brought us dish after dish after dish!)
We even managed to get bargain manicures, but still no luck with the Croc jibbitz that we’ve been looking for all the time we’ve been here. For an Australian brand it’s bizarre there are no dedicated shops anywhere here.
We walked down to the beach, looking around a couple of deli’s on the way, and enjoyed seeing the waves crashing in on a virtually empty beach given the cloudier weather. We sat again above the sea swimming pool at the Iceberg club and watched the waves and the swimmers whilst doing the crossword and Worldle (neither of which I’m really any good at but I enjoy learning more geography through Worldle!).
Walked slowly round the bay then headed - via wrong route initially - to a lovely restaurant that K had found called Sean’s, overlooking the sea. Gorgeous dinner with divine asparagus tartlet, mussels and prawns, heritage pork, baked custard, goats cheese ice cream and a chocolate spoon, fabulous, and a lovely ambience there too. We planned out menus on the paper tablecloth as the dusk settled outside and we watched ships’ lights move across the horizon.
Jumped on the bus and the train home with no hitches….home in half an hour and slumped a bit after our 9 mile day, but it’s felt a slow paced and relaxing one.