Mt. Coot-tha and Riverfire

It's been a little while since I've posted, but school has been keeping me fairly busy lately. I have a test and a paper due next week and two more papers due by the end of September. This month is going to be fairly intense for school work. The good news is that once all of this is over I get to go to New Zealand!

Last weekend, Jordan and I went up to Mt. Coot-tha to walk around the botanical gardens there. There's also a lookout over the city, but we didn't want to wait an hour for another bus, so that didn't happen. The gardens were nice, nothing super exciting though. Pictures are posted on Flickr.

This weekend was great! The Brisbane Riverfestival is going on right now and every year they put on a huge fireworks show called Riverfire. We went down to the market in West End and then over to Cole's in the morning to do our weekly grocery shopping and then headed over the South Bank. We set up a spot on the steps overlooking the river and settled in to wait. There were a decent number of people waiting for the fireworks by the time we arrived around 1 pm, but it wasn't overly crowded. Becca and Beth joined us shortly after we arrived and were followed by Leslie, Dani (on spring break from Tasmania), Brittany (on spring break from New Zealand), and two of Dani's friends. More friends and acquaintances from the apartments showed up as the day went on. We played cards and chatted. Got a little bit of a tan while hanging out in my swimsuit. We were all getting pretty anxious for the show to start around 5 or so. They had some Air Force planes do a fly-over a little after 5 to get things started before the 7 pm fireworks. By about 6:30 it was impossible to move anywhere on the banks of the river. I think pretty much every person in Brisbane turned out to see the show.

The fireworks started just past 7 and were sychronized to music playing from a radio station. There were 3 barges in the river as well as fireworks being shot off from 3 bridges and a few of the buildings downtown. It was hard to know where to look after it started because there were fireworks everywhere! This was the best fireworks show I've ever seen and I had such an awesome time yesterday. My camera didn't do so well at taking pictures of the fireworks, but I tried anyway. Pictures from the day are posted on Flickr.

I probably won't have much to post over the next month or so. It's likely I'll just have tons of studying to do and not many opportunities to get out and do stuff. Hope you all enjoy the pictures!

Also, keep New Orleans in your thoughts. One of my best friends is being evacuated from Tulane. Hopefully they're wrong about Gustav being worse than Katrina!

That's all for now. Love and miss you all!

Nicole

Fun Times in Sydney

We got back from Sydney yesterday. It was a lot of fun to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there. Definitely more of the 'big city' feel.

We got up at 4:30 for our 7 am flight and got into the city in Sydney around 9:30 on Thursday morning. The view from the plane was just awesome! After checking into our hotel we walked around the city a little bit and had lunch in the park. After lunch we headed over to Darling Harbour and walked around there for a bit. We then walked over to the Sydney Fish Market and got a lemon tart from this pastry place on the way. It was pretty fabulous. The Fish Market was pretty awesome too. All kinds of fish and all of it looked just amazing. After the fish market it started raining so we ran back toward the harbour to try and get out of it. The rest of the evening was pretty drizzly. Got a piece of pizza down the street from our hotel and then some chicken skewers with honey mustard aioli at a tapas place. After that we went to another restaurant that we had noticed and had a tomato tart with filo dough, cherry tomatoes, caramelized onions, basil, and goat cheese. Great stuff. Good ending to a very long day.

Day 2 started off with breakfast and then walking over to Sydney Harbour, the bridge, and the opera house. Jordan had a cold and wasn't feeling too great, so we walked around there for a bit and then came back to the hotel to nap. Dinner ended up being kind of a bust that night. We couldn't really find anything that was what we wanted or that wasn't totally booked. Went back to the hotel again and ordered some Thai food. After waiting over an hour we called to find out that they didn't even have any orders open. By this time it was almost midnight and I was ready to crash so Jordan got some sandwiches from a place down the street. We watched the opening ceremony for the Olympics, which was pretty cool.

Day 3 made the whole trip totally worth it for me. After breakfast we went to the markets in the Chinatown area and then walked back toward Darling Harbour to visit the Sydney Aquarium. The aquarium was pretty cool and we got to see some seals and fish and what not. After the aquarium we went back to the fish market to have lunch. I got some tuna sashimi and fried calamari. Both the best I've ever had. Totally fresh. After lunch we walked over to the Harbour Bridge and found some more markets set up. They were pretty cool and had some neat stuff. Then we went up to the pylon on the bridge so we could see the harbour better. The view of the opera house was equivalent to what you would see on a post card. Just awesome stuff. Seeing that in person was the highlight of the trip for me. After the bridge we went down to the rocks for more views of the harbour and opera house. After all of this it was getting close to time to head over to our hotel. We decided to stay at one close to the airport so we could get up later so we got some stuff at the grocery store for dinner and breakfast and then headed to the hotel.

So, that was pretty much it for Sydney. I definitely enjoyed the trip and really loved seeing the opera house. We got some really good photos too. Those are already posted so take a look when you get a chance. Next big thing we have planned is New Zealand at the end of next month, but I'm thinking we might check out Ekka soon. It's a carnival/festival thing they do here every year. Apparently it's sort of a big deal and we have this Wednesday off of school for it.

On another note, I'm happy to say that my microwaveable cake turned out quite well and I'm very happy to have that recipe available to me.

Hope all is well with everyone and that you all enjoy the pictures!

Love,
Nicole

P.S. Go Team USA!!!

Sydney, Chocolate Cake, and HARRY POTTER 6

Firstly, Jordan and I are heading to Sydney in the morning around 7. Pretty excited for this trip. I believe we're going to see a symphony at the opera house and there will be plenty of pictures when I get back.

In other, unrelated news... my kitchen does not have an oven. For those of you who know me well, I very much enjoy the whole cooking/baking thing. It has been quite upsetting not being able to make cookies or any other baked good. Thanks to Tara, who brought me to StumbleUpon, which brought me to Tastespotting, I now have an answer to this problem. Microwavable chocolate cake! That's the link for anyone who's interested. Not that any of you are ever without an oven, but this takes all of 5 minutes to prep and cook. Pretty sweet. I'm very excited to try it out tonight.

Also, Tara (she seems to be all over this post) informed me that the HP6 trailer has come out. Thank you, Tara, for bringing such an important thing to my attention. She asked me to post this on my blog, as she feels that such information is vital to my readers, apparently. I happen to agree with her. So... Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince!

That would be all. More when we get back from Sydney!

Nicole

I finally got the picture of Jordan and me at the koala sanctuary scanned into the computer (actually, Jordan scanned it, but whatever). It's also on Flickr.