Bondi is a pretty spectacular beach, which I suppose is why it gets so crowded. We met up with Billy, Claire’s old co-worker who moved to Bondi over a year ago. He showed us his house, introduced us to his roommate Andi, and gave us the keys to his place. The next day, after spending the whole morning in the wedge we headed back over to Billy’s place. It poured for most of the day and into the evening. We went out to get some groceries and wine to hold us over for the next couple of days, otherwise the rain kept us indoors for most of the day. In the evening, we ate gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches with smoked cheddar on Turkish bread, with tomato and avocado. We stayed in and watched a horrible ripped copy of The Aviator. Pretty easy day.

On Thursday we got up and lounged a bit, then went out for coffee. The view of the beach from the coffee shop was fantastic and the day proved to be a beautiful one after the day of monsoon rain. We spent a good hour there reading and writing in our journals, I think I could spend an hour of every day on the rest of this trip sitting with a coffee reading and writing.

Around noon Mike and Cara showed up with Marc, who is from England but has been teaching in Japan for the last year or so. The 5 of us headed down to the beach with 3 surfboards, Squash, a frisbee, and bit of sunscreen. Cara and Mike’s host, Ed, showed up to hang out for most of the afternoon as well. A day on the beach - we played some squash, we surfed (not well, the waves were coming back to back and were pretty hard to ride, plus we all pretty much stink at surfing) and did a lot of laying on the sand. That was surprisingly our first day of just laying on the beach for a few hours.
After the beach we had Fish n Chips and beers and just enjoyed the end of the day together. Claire and I came home, took a shower and changed to go out for the evening. We met Cara, Mike, Ed and Marc at Ed’s place. We had a beer and hung out just chatting until we went out for a bit more food. Claire rolled her ankle on the walk to get food, no worries, she’s fine. The highlight of the evening was probably the Indian restaurant we sat and ate at for a bit. We ordered Dosas that were super delicious. If you haven’t had a Dosa you haven’t had a South Indian - light rice crepe eaten with sambar and coconut chutney. Highly recommended by yours truly. After eating we met Ed and Marc, with Ed’s roommates at the Dolphin Bar. Claire and I didn’t stick around for long, midnight was nearing and I was likely to turn into a pumpkin, or whatever happens at midnight. We took a bus back to Bondi and slept the night away.

It’s likely that we won’t have another post up for a few days, possibly not until after Christmas. As I write Mike is picking up Cara with our rental car and we are all heading out to the Blue Mountains for Christmas. We’ll be hiking in Newnes, we’re not really sure where that is, but we’ve been told by a ranger that the hike in is about 4 hours, we can camp wherever we want and hike back out - should be loads of fun. We’ll be back for New Years, and will hopefully have some great photos and some video to post before the New Years/my birthday celebrations. To keep you all busy for the couple of day we are un able to post, I highly recommend checking out the clips page (you can waste a good amount of time there.), or perhaps spend some time checking out our aquarium photos. If you are just starting to read our blog you could go back and start from the begging to catch up with our Adventures. I recommend that you spend time posting a comment on the blog, posting comments is always fun, everyone loves it. Also check out Mike and Cara’s blog, we’re in their blog too! And if that isn’t enough you could try to roll over elves with a giant snowball.
Merry Christmas to all (Happy Hanukah to some - like Mike) who we have been celebrating with for the last few days! Back in a few!

-Whit (n Claire)