Becks, Bondi & Boats

Posted by Andy Geoghegan, on November 30th, 2007 Leave a comment

The Telstra Stadium in Sydney (The Olympic Stadium) is pretty good. Not dissimilar to the new stadia popping up in the UK every week but it’s big, brash and you can take your booze into the stands.

We started drinking at about 2pm at Lowenbrau (the place we went to last year with the Litre beers and the beer wench managed to carry 8 in one go) before heading to a pub by Central station to meet Proph. When we got to the station I discovered another way that Australia is better than the UK – your match ticket gets you on public transport to the game; so simple and oh so effective.

Getting to the stadium was an example of yet another example of Aussie brilliance. This was a huge game, the biggest football match in Australia. Had this been in the UK it would be crawling with coppers and they would shut down the bars around the game. The Aussies put in extra bars and have the coppers there to tell you where they are. We stayed outside the Homebush Pub (where Jed took us last year) drinking until approximately half an hour before kick off and then went in to sample Beckham-mania.

Did that paragraph have too many full stops in it?

Many said that the game was a bit disappointing, personally I thought it was good and have seen far worse games and not many better 5-3 scorelines in front of over 80,000 fans. Sydney dominated and made LA look like a pub team, not even a very good pub team. It was 3-0 to Sydney after 44 minutes and then LA were awarded a free kick 25 yards out, the inevitable happened and the crowd were happy. By this time I was smashed and started abusing the LA players.

On Wednesday I forced Karen out of bed at the unreasonable hour of 10.30am as the sun was beaming down and I had always wanted to get the ferry to Manly – this was our first beach day since arriving in Sydney on Sunday and we made the most of it with Grace taking the trip into Sydney to join us. The ferry to Manly enjoys some of the best view in Sydney and is well worth the trip for that alone – I don’t have a picture from the day time to show you but the night shot at the end of this post is a good picture at night that I got yesterday. The picture below is an example of the fine view on Manly beach…

Phwoooaaar

Those who saw my status update on Facebook will know that we went out on Bondi with Dom on Wednesday. He had booked us a table at Hurricanes restaurant, renowned for its meat and ribs. I ordered the Steak & Rib combo and the ribs were that big the sirloin just looked like the ribs had had a dump on the side of the plate.

Mmmmm. Meat.

We met up with Dom’s housemate + 1 and commenced some good drinking at the Beach Road complete with my new favourite drinking game – Spoof Minesweeping. We take turns to find an unwanted drink and then spoof for the drinker.

Dom doing a ‘Brent’ pose whilst Pezza auditions for Miss Bondi 2007.

Another fabulous day, another beach. This time we went to the legendary Bondi Beach. I uploaded this picture earlier and didn’t realise this big fat heifer was in the way – she is by no way an accurate representation as to the quality of rat that Bondi has to offer. Sorry.

Bondi’s great, it really is. Some say they don’t like it because it’s too commercial but I think that’s what makes it great. Compare it to some of the beaches in Thailand and Europe where you can’t relax without ‘Jimmys‘ flogging you jewelery or other tat – Bondi always has various events on whether it’s a beauty contest or a surf show but the beach is easily large enough to accommodate this without getting in your way.

Last night was spent on a boat – we had booked a cruise around the Harbour with a 3 course meal and a very friendly Estonian waiter – it was a great way to sign out of Sydney and we left with this stunning view:

It would have been a better view but my fat head is blocking the Opera House.

It’s now 7pm and we’re at Sydney airport in order to fly to Hawaii. It is highly confusing because we get to Hawaii at 8.30am this morning. Pezza is having serious issues about when to take her pill as today is effectively a 45 hour day. On the plus side though it means that we will spend today on a beach meaning that over 3 days we will have been on Manly, Bondi and Waikiki beaches!

For the next few days you can see us here on the Waikiki Beach webcam:

http://live.waikikitimes.com/

Lots of love,

Andy

xxx

PS for those reading via the Flog on Facebook – click on this link to go to & bookmark the main Blog page:

http://andygeog.blogsppot.com

The Facebook one takes a while to update and sometimes misses some content.

A xxx

PPS, if you spellcheck ‘Bondai’ you get ‘Boned’. Hehe.

Geotag Icon Show on map

Andy's Blog - Gone Further