A quiet day in Sydney
The day was spent at David and Zoe's doing various little jobs. We caught up with some e mails made Zoe lunch as she was working at home and polished David's guitar again. The excitement began when we left at 4.00pm to go into Sydney to a restaurant where Zoe and David had booked a meal.
The journey on the ferry was lovely, as was the walk into the Rocks area where we had gone to see the night markets. Unfortunately we were a little early, the markets didn't start until 6.30 and we were there just gone five. This matter was easily resolved by Zoe who suggested a glass of wine and as she was a little hungry a small snack. So we went to a small wine bar and ordered some wine and a taster plate. At this point David joined us which was great, but we were still too early so we had to have another glass of wine.
After this we walked around the markets which David and Zoe were a little disappointed about as they were a little smaller than last year. Rosemarie and I still enjoyed them and the walk around the Rocks area. All too soon it was time to walk off for our meal.
On the way to the restaurant we saw Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman who were at the premiere of Les Miserables in Sydney, they were all of seventy five yards from us. Big thrills all around.
The restaurant was in a shopping mall and you had to enter it through a clothes shop which was a bit odd, but of course if you needed a new dress for the meal this was the  place to go.
 By this time I needed to visit the toilet and asked where they were, to be told that they were outside the shop , just to the left. Off I went, but for a little while I couldn't find them. They were off to the right about fifty metres away, I felt a little better on my return to find David looking for them on the left side.
The meal was very interesting , fish cerviche for the first course which I did manage to eat, then we had chicken cut into two centimetre  rounds and served with crisp chicken skin and vegetables.
The next course was veal which was fantastic but a little spoilt by a large dollop of tuna mousse in the middle. I did try it twice but found it too strong so I was then forced to separate it form my meat and veg, with the result that I ate all around it. The end result was that the tuna mousse was left in the middle of the plate completely deserted. When the waitress came to collect the plates she asked me why I had left it and I replied that I didn't like tuna, which seemed fair enough to me. Se then told me that it did have a strong taste.
By this time I needed to go to the toilet again and left the table. When I got to the shop door the door was closed. I eventually found a button to open the door but as soon as I stepped out I knew I was in trouble as there was  no button on the other side to get back in.
To add insult to injury the mens' toilets were shut so I had to use the disabled toilet, when I got back to the shop door I couldn't get in and was forced like some idiot to mime eating actions to a shop girl inside, she clearly thought I was the local lunatic and started laughing so I was forced to repeat the action at which point she signalled that I should go around to the left and ther I found another entrance to the shop /restaurant, this led into a corridor which looked like a medieval armourers ' as it had chain mail curtains all along the corridor, which had appeared by magic in the time it had taken me to go to the loo and perform my mimes.
Back at table we had pudding based around macadamia nuts which was very tasty. The whole meal was a real experience and we were very grateful to David and Zoe for organising it, it so rare that we get a chance to eat a meal like that.
After the meal we all decided that we might not go to the restaurant again but hat it had been a very interesting experience.
The journey home was also interesting as we got a taxi and the driver spent almost the whole journey on the phone talking to someone in Sri Lankan or Urdu. We all decided  that he would get no tip and that is exactly waht happened.
So a quiet day, a great meal, and an interesting ride home, all in all a good day.