Easter update - see the diving pig!

I've put some new photos up on our Yahoo photo album, including some of The Royal Easter Show we went to last weekend. See racing pigs, the diving pig, and a snake crawling up my arm. More slithering, I suppose. Link is on the left of the diary.

Cheered in the pub

Hello. Stephen here with an Easter update.

On Thursday it was our eighth pub quiz. We came first in each of the seven previous quizzes, and given that first, second and thrid places all get a prize we were hoping for a little booze to see us through the week. When the results were read out the whole pub cheered us. There was a lot of love in the room.

We hadn't won. We hadn't even come second.

We came fourth (out of six).

Disater had stucken. When we arrived Sim, the manager of the pub, was dancing around saying that she'd been getting together a mega-team to beat us. The previous week the quizmaster had told her she'd die before she beat us, and she'd taken this to heart. She was sure her team would beat us, especially since we didn't have Richard to help us.

As it was, the quizmaster split her team into two. Those teams came first and third. If he hadn't split them we'd have at least come third! In second place was a team of eight people of a few nationalities. The two of us can't feel too bad about being beaten by a team of eight, I suppose.

But whilst our pride took a bashing, we were quite touched by all the cheering and good-natured ribbing we got for coming fourth. It really felt like we were part of a small community, and that's quite nice when you're so far from home.

We'll pick ourselves up and keep going. It's the only thing to do.

Wet Friday

We'd planned a few things for the Easter Weekend, including a 9km walk (from our Walking In Sydney book). However, it was raining on Friday, so (after Anne had got the toothpaste out of my hair) we decided to go for a swim and to an art gallery. Being Good Friday, we found everything closed and so wandered about in the rain for a while before deciding to give up and go to the cinema (Richard - my Empire writing stalkee - had given us free preview tickets to The Good Girl). We bummed around the rest of the day, having a coffee and cake in a coffee shop and then hiring a video.

Wet Saturday

Still raining on and off on Saturday. We went to The Australian Museum, a big museum with aboriginal stuff, dinosaurs, insects, skellingtons, minerals and evolutionary biology. We spent over two hours in there, which isn't bad for less than two pounds each! We swam in the afternoon, and that pretty much wiped us out for the rest of the day. Again, we collapsed in front of a video in the evening.

Grape Trail

Rain again on Sunday - bah! Fortunately we had a tour booked which didn't rely on good weather. We did a bus tour of The Hunter Valley. This is a wine growing region about two hours north of Sydney. In a group of 16 (including us) we were taken to three wine-growing businesses, had a tour of the facilities and drank small amounts of lots of different wines at each. We were also given some fortified wine and spirits, including a "dragon's breath" liquer, which had chillis in it. I was a bit pathetic and scrunched my face up at this one. How it burned! Anne, of course, took it like a man and reckons she could drink some more.

We were very drowsy after the second winery, and had a nice steak lunch. We collapsed, slightly hung-over, in front of a video in the evening. See a pattern here?

Mosman Trek

Finally, a non-rainy day! We bounded out of bed at the crack of 10am, and walked to Circular Quay to get a ferry to Cremorne. From there we walked (over) nine kilometers up to Mosman and beyond. We passed the zoo we went to a few weeks ago, and got some great views of the harbour. The weather was perfect for walking - dry but not too hot. We're both shattered now, so I expect we'll spend the rest of the day flaked out, reading the paper. Perhaps a video tonight - I don't know.

I hope we have dry weather next weekend when we're going for a bushwalk in The Blue Mountains. Aren't we outdoorsy?