Sydney and the Blue Mountains

No Wifi is the cause for my little posting, I decidd to do it via my 3G connection resulting in more text and no pics...

Sydney is an amazing city, our appartment is right next to Hyde Park, and the noise of the city is overwhelming, annoying but exciting at the same time.
We are set in the quarters where as far as we heard sailors often end up.
As we were walking back to the appartment on an afternoon Matt said, hey dad, adult shop is there we are nearly home, need I say more.
We took a walk through The park to get to the Opera House, had lunch on the promenade and the boys and Val went for a Jetboat ride in the harbour.
I am feeling ill, flewish, snottish, heavy headish, not wellish at allish.
I went for a rest in the park looking up at on my left a banana tree and on my right a palm tree.
The family came back soaking wet from the jetboat and we strolled back to the westlife tower to get a look of Sydney from above.
As we reached the westlife tower we passed through a Mall where Val feasted her eyes (jeeej for me, thank God we're traveling and we can't pack) on louboutin, gucci, etc.....

We had a fantastic day wanting to go to Manly but ending up on paddington market, great food, great fun. Little stands with artwork, clothing, jewelry, odds and ends of all kind.
A walk back through a photography museum where we admired the beautiful pictures of Frederick Murray Fredericks and on to the next day we went.

We met with a friend of Val at Bondi Beach, guys pumping iron, exercising running, over muscled, over tattooed. Girls over boobed and lipped and tanned wearing bathing suits far to small and people and people and more people and surfers and runners and skaters and swimmers.
An action place is the least you could say, restaurants and bars and cafės, the place to be, only I am not sure it's the place I would want to be. Glad I saw it, what amazed me most is the mass of people beeing in the sea or on the beach and the icebreaker café/pool. Imagine a café built on the cliffs with a pool at the base where waves slam on the pool walls into the sea.As the overmuscled ones are swimming up and down and up and down.
Quite a sight great refreshment, the kids went for a swim and had a blast.

I went for japanese in the evening with Matt alone, and I appolagised to the guy sitting at the table next to us For starring at but that I needed to explain what was going on to my son. The guy was extremely tatooed with one tatoo on the full skull, scarification on the arms and inserts onthe forehead and the side of his head. His ears had flesh tunnels so big you could sit behind him at the movies with a whole football team and still be able to look at the screen through them.
Matt was in awe, loved it and so did he!

A stressy morning to pack and leave the appartment towards the blue mountains and on the road we were agai or so we thought.We got to Leura a nice little village and then to Katoomba where we whitnessed a serious bushfire in Katoomba to end up in a cottage in Blackheath.
I must say something looks after us cause we ended up in an agency that proposed this cottage overlooking the Golf Course with a garden full of flowers front or back, the back of the cottage a full bay window overlooking the golf course the valley and the hill, all in a fifties style.
I ended up for the first time in three months in front of the TV watching X Factor and loving it.

The kids each in a seperate room, Val and I in front of the TV when all of a sudden I hear :" Hen, oh mon dieu!"
I saw Vals terorised face, she jumped on the chair screaming and She couldn't even remember I had slapped her arm hard to calm her down(which didn't help).
A fairly big spider on the wall gave me a slight scare aswell.
Matt awoken by mum screaming was laughing his head off at Vals reaction, and me knowing nothing about spiders decided to let go of the pot I was holding to catch and change for something that would give me more distance,a vase did the trick, I caught and released the hairy legged eight eye outside Val calmed down and Matthew wentto bed. I must say that look around when I am barefoot in the house since then, we are after all in the land of poisonous spiders and snakes.

Woke up late (eight thirty) everyone asleep, I gues the benefits of having the kids sleeping seperately, and after some home schooling and dutch with Matt and djudj we went to discover the beauty surrounding the house.
The weather is working against us and we experienced a drop of temperature close to twenty five degrees celcius in twenty four hours,with it mist and rain.
Val is getting close to her moon cycle which brings forth changes of temperatures on mood level as dramatic as the weather ones.
Matthew is having trouble aiming in the toilet and Djudj is moody, I am still feeling a bit of the 'ish' symptoms wich doesn't realy help my patience.
One of 'them' mornings I guess.
Dramatic views of the mountains from the lookout, a good lunch, a nice drive to a jurassic scenery and a few ripe mango's toend tje afternoon in our cottage in front of the open fire without fire cause I was too stingy to buy a big bag of wood for two days.

I ll update more soon we are about three days later as I post this!

Location:Blackheat, Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia