WET WET WET!!!

Last Sunday, we decided to head out to a beach.  Maybe we wouldn't be able to go in the water, but at least we could build some sand castles.  That WAS our intention at first, but by 10 am it was POURING.  We decided to go to the Cook and Philip indoor pool near Hyde Park instead.  The drive was about 30 minutes on the tolled M2. 

 A couple of things to note about driving in Sydney:

1.  Some of the motorways are tolled (private) and others are not (public).  It costs about $20 for a return trip to and from our house to the city centre; this can get very pricey but the non-tolled roads can be very busy and are a giant parking lot on the weekends.

2.   The streets do not follow a grid design as in Vancouver so they are ALL over the place.  Different parts of a street will have different names, even if it's in the same suburb.  There is no easy way to decipher whether we are heading north, south, east or west.  The road signs are pretty horrendous and usually covered by over-grown bush.  Needless to say, we often get lost.  Not for long or very far, but we end up driving around and around at least once on every journey.

3.    The Sydney mapbook is over 500 pages thick!  I don't know exactly how many suburbs make up the Sydney area but there are ALOT!!

Anyhow the pool was good.  There was a wave pool and a hydrotherapy pool (ie hot tub).  The girls enjoyed it and Fergus got a chance to do 20 laps as well.  After our swim, we stopped at a neighbouring cafe/restaurant - Bodhi in the Park.  On our way to the pool we saw lots of people eating there so we thought it might be good.  There was outdoor seating and the restaurant served dim sum.  Well, it turned out to the strangest meal we've had in a very long time.  NOTHING tasted like the dim sum we were familiar with.  Only afterwards did we realize that it was a VEGAN dim sum restaurant!  The sticky rice had lots of mushrooms and no meat.  The BBQ pork buns were called BBQ buns but the contents were unknown to us.  Anyways, the food was very bad and it was a crappy way to spend $50, but the setting was different and interesting.  We're here for new experiences, right??