There are not very many times where I wake up early, willingly. Okay, there have been 0 times I've woken up early enough to see the sunrise voluntarily, so if I see the sunrise at some point in my life it would definitely be by force. And what better way to do it than through volunteering! ... Okay that came out wrong. Through my uni I signed up to the earliest shift right by the Opera House forcing me to wake up at 5:30 am.
Opera House
Bennelong Point, Sydney NSW
I have to warn you though I'm the height of a leprechaun so the angles are a bit hhmmm but enjoy my views of the sky that morning!
But first lemme take a selfie :L Almost got stabbed by a selfie stick that morning
It was so worth it, but it's safe to say I'm definitely not doing it again any time soon.
These last few weeks I've been desperately trying to escape the cold chill of Winter, so I headed down to the beach. Okay so it wasn't the most amazing idea; hair was flying everywhere, the water was so cold. Eventually I even decided to hide in a restaurant but what to eat at San Souci? It's a bit of a hole but I decided to give Bay Vista a go and wow it did not disappoint.
83 The Grand Parade,
Brighton-Le-Sands NSW
I don't know why but I found this on the adults only section of the menu? I'm fairly certain it had no alcohol in it, and they didn't ask for ID. No, I did not order it for the alcohol ... maybe ... Shhhh. The passion fruit was a bit sour for me but if you eat it with the meringue its perfect.
The crepes are a great way to start since they're so light and fluffy.
Then the waffles are more heavy handed and filling. Bottom line is, dessert can absolutely fill you up like lunch
Unfortunately the backlog of posts continues, at least I haven't hit writer's block yet but I promise it'll be over soon!
As a lot of you probably already know Vivid, the light show in Sydney was quite a long time ago; but since it was my first time I wanted to show you all my blurry, bad quality night photos haha. Hopefully next year when I go again I'll have an actual camera and my photography will have improved #lifegoals
I really liked this one! It was like a small igloo but with these mirror shard walls, with some lights reflected across all the walls, so pretty!
This was definitely the highlight. An animation was projected onto Customs House in the CBD and can I just say it look waayy better in person. It had a bit of everything: haunted house, under the sea, little people running around. It was great.
Did a bit of Sydney harbour wandering and found some robot people dressed better than us.
I don't know what this was but there was some pretty scary audio of children playing and singing lullabies. It was just so eerie. At least the structure was nice.
One of the better pictures of the light show at Museum of Contemporary Art, but I like the lights on the picture below better. Too bad its so fuzzy
Finally reaching the last chapter. Yay! Gotta say this was definitely the best day and left me with great memories. We had some time to kill in the morning and decided to see a bit of Tasmania's history in Richmond.
Richmond Bridge
Bridge St, Richmond TAS
View from on top of Richmond bridge. If you cross to the other side you'll find cafes, grocery stores and s fish n chips store.
St John's Catholic Church, which is the oldest church still in use in Australia
and lastly Richmond Gaol ... well the back of it. If you pay you can have yourself locked up for no reason :) Kidding haha. Well not really. For a small fee you can get the whole prisoner experience without committing a crime and getting a criminal record. The reception area was creepy enough as it is so I stuck to taking photos around the place.
Sorell Fruit Farm
174 Pawleena Road Sorell 7172
We tried to hit up one more strawberry farm to see if we could pick for free. No such luck. In fact picking was more expensive than just going to a Woolies.
After a few more hours of driving we finally hit Hobart! Being a city girl at heart I could not be more thrilled. Seeing cars and the lovely sight of concrete and buildings and bustling people. Okay so it wasn't bustling ... at all but compared to the country I felt like yelling PPEOPPPLEEE thank goodness.
Princes Wharf No.1
Castray Esplanade Hobart TAS
Unfortunately for me, after being in the city for a small while, and having wifi (almost stayed at the motel the whole day because of that) we headed back out to the countryside.
Curringa Farm
5831 Lyell Hwy, Hamilton TAS
It was so worth it though! The farm owns 2 sheep dogs and one of them had given birth a little while ago so we got to play with her 5 puppies before they were given to other owners. This one is chocolate. The only one that seemed to like me /sniffle
I can't remember his name but he was having none of my I just want to have a mini photo shoot with you nonsense.
Just a heads up though, the dogs aren't part of the package. The package we got was $110 per person, which includes lunch, watching the sheep dogs herd the sheep, sheep shearing and a tour of the whole farm. There's beef and lamb of course but I have an allergy to beef and I'm not that into lamb so chicken it is! The lemon water was amazing it was so cleansing but sweet and yummy all at the same time
The farm tour was basically the farmer telling us about different parts of his farm, different types of animal poo and we spotted some wallabies. It wasn't awe inspiring but the view was pretty amazing, especially at the lake.
Before we left the farmer told us to continue on in the direction of the waterfall. Since I'd never seen one in real life I was like Let's Goooo! We crossed a bridge on the way, right in the middle of the most picturesque lake. It almost looked like the salt lake, with the reflection an all, it was beautiful. You have to be careful though because it's just a road and there's really no where to stop. Luckily for us it was a quiet day and there was only 1 car using the bridge with us.
Unfortunately we didn't have time for the waterfall, so close but so far. Maybe next time. But on that note I'm so glad we found this lake to finish on a high note.
So I just discovered I can get to Narnia through my closet and forgot to come back. Haha wow that was terrible but I promise to find some balance between blogging and maintaining a life. (Even though I've proven several times I'm terrible at it). But to make up for it I've revamped the website a bit (more changes to come hopefully) and changed my url :) Hope you like it. Moving on ...
Okay the good part of my trip pretty much starts here. I'm not really one for driving around the country taste testing things. Don't get me wrong free food is my life but not for 3 days and it wasn't nice free food either. So next stop winery. No one goes to Tas without visiting a vineyard and we went to:
1216 Pipers Brook Road, Pipers Brook TAS
If I remember correctly tasting wine costs around $35
If you're not into wine there's a cute little look out where you can get a view of the vineyard (at the back there) and so so many ducks. Although they all ran away because my cousin was running over as I took this shot
There's nothing stopping you from eating the grapes (yay more free food) but the ones I found were tiny and not very ripe. So making the most of the blue skies and ignoring our empty stomachs we headed out to Cataract Gorge Reserve. (ps. don't worry if you get lost cause it took us forever to find)
74-90 Basin Road, Launceston TAS
There's several ways you can get around within the reserve. There a trails that lead you up to the suspension bridge and more challenging hikes past that or if you're lazy like me you can take the chair lift up and walk maybe 10-15 mins to get to the bridge.
Other than the fact I'm lazy I think the chairlift is better because you get the most amazing view of the river the basin and the park closer to the entrance, instead of staring at concrete because you can't catch a breath and keep up with your group (no, of course that didn't happen to me ... /cough)
Once you've crossed the bridge there's a few hiking trails which I think were supposed to take you around the reserve but total hiking time was around maybe 2 hours or so and unfortunately we didn't have time so we hiked for about an hour and had to turn around.
If you ever get lost or not sure which trail is the best just ask anyone you see, especially joggers (there are always joggers), they're the friendliest and most helpful people. Sometimes they just say hi as they're running just for the hell of it. One of them even directed us on the trail (it was embarrassing when he lapped us though)
Then once you've had enough exercise for the day you can come back to the park and enjoy the pool the cafe or the bathroom if necessary :)
Heyo! Welcome to my little jar of sunshine. Just an ice cream addict and a cookie monster in disguise collecting all her favourite memories, in a jar, that is this blog... Wow that was a long sentence