Vivid Sydney

Just one more post for my marathon blogging day...

This fortnight is the Vivid festival of music, light and ideas.

I haven't seen too much of it yet, but hope to next week when feeling better.

The most obvious thing is how they're lighting up the Circular Quay and the Rocks areas. The pedestrian path over the harbour bridge was packed with everyone taking photos of the Opera House on Tuesday evening as I was running home. Didn't have my camera, but the official Vivid shot is below. looks like they have tie-dyed the Opera House!
The Museum of Contemporary Art is looking pretty funky too.
Think I remember ta similar thing on Buckingham Palace once?

Half marathon

17th May was the SMH half-marathon! I've had bad knees since last (UK) summer so wasn't sure I'd ever be able to do this, but 5 months of slowly building the distance back up (and great runs discovering lots of areas of Sydney) paid off.

It was my first half- marathon and I was hoping to do it in around 2 hours, and in the end came in at just under 1.48 which was in top 15% of female finishers so really very pleased!!! Adam did amazingly too, especially since he hadn't been able to train much and got a bad stitch but still 1.37!

It was a brilliant atmosphere, around 10,000 people started, so very busy but only a few areas where the crowd was slowing us down. The route was 2 laps around the CBD, taking in all the sites.I definitely want to do more now... would like to try for a full marathon if I had enough time to dedicate to the training (btw congrats again Sam for the London!)

Here's me passing the Harbour bridgeAnd I should be somewhere in this crowd!
More pics if they leave them up...

Hanmer Springs

We went to Hanmer Springs in the south island of New Zealand, just 2 hours north of Christchurch, over weekend of 10th May for Adam's birthday.We really loved what we saw of New Zealand, have to go back soon! Hanmer was a really cute little village with some big walks that start from there. And the thermal springs and great pubs after a day of walking were brilliant too!
It was about 2 degrees most days and snowing which adam loved! And the people were so friendly, the couple who ran the Settlers Inn Motel http://www.settlersinnmotel.co.nz/ were great, beautiful rooms too, would recommend staying there!We went up mount isobel (1300m) which was a beautiful 4 hour walk, the snow got quite thick and extremely windy in places, but brilliant views.
It was rainy one day so we did quad biking, you can do all those kind of sports, bungy jumping, rafting etc from Hanmer - was a perfect break!

Ballet at the Opera House

On their last day in Sydney Marilyn and I went to see an australian ballet production at the Opera House, well extracts from 3 Russian ballets - Firebird, Petrouchka and Les Sylphides. It was amazing to see inside the Opera House and it was great for me to see 3 extracts as I haven't seen many before.

Firebird was my favourite as it has such unusual costumes.Les Sylphides was just beautiful to watch though and what I imagine of more classical ballet.Petrouchka was more of a funny story about magical puppets in a russian village which was really a bit freaky!

Hawks Nest for Easter

It is a bit of a rainy weekend and we both have colds so finally got round to updating my blog!

For the long weekend over Easter we went to Hawk's Nest with Adams mum and dad who were over for a holiday. It was about 3 hours drive north from Sydney, a small town on the coast in an area called Port Stephens.

I left it quite late to book, so there wasn't much accommodation left, but the place we had was OK even if it looked like something out of the 1950s with the crotcheted doilies! The location was fantastic though, right across from the river.I would definitely recommend the area for a short break. We really enjoyed the boat trip across to Nelson Bay, where we saw a few dolphins. We realised afterwards that the dolphins even came up the river and we could see them from our front window!We tried looking for koalas in the reserve, couldn't see any but told they are there.

The walk up to the top of Yacaaba Head is well worth it for the amazing views,
and walking back along the beach we saw this unusual cloud formation which was very apt for Easter Monday!

Top Gear Live!

We went to the Top Gear Live show yesterday. I'm not so into cars but Adam is and I find Jeremy Clarkson quite funny so thought it could be good!

It was boiling hot so we didn't stand around looking at the cars outside acer arena for too long and went to take our seats.

The whole thing is highly sponsored as you'd expect and contains so much advertising, but I actually really enjoyed the live ads prior to the show beginning. Navman did a live piece with a couple arguing over directions then the 'Navman' walking down through the audience singing a love song and giving the couple a GPS which of course fixed their whole relationship! And Audi did a great dramatic piece with the arena lighting and Audi circles flying everywhere.

In the actual show itself, was quite similar to the TV show, they had the Cool Wall, and spent quite a while making jokes at James May's expense (who wasn't their with Jeremy and Richard).

The best bits I thought were the car football (bit of a shame the England team lost against the Aussie cars - there were only about 6 of us cheering england on in the audience!), and the 4 motorbikes who drive around inside a metal sphere!
Would definitely recommend it!

More surfing!

Battered, bruised and sunburnt after today's surfing, but really enjoyed it still!

Think I am improving too, stood up for at least 2 seconds today ;-)

Have decided Narrabeen is my favourite place to surf, we've been there a couple of times now and although it's a bit further out, it is pretty much empty compared to Manly and there is loads of free parking.
The surf was breaking quite close to the shore and it was low tide so we were able to stand in the water and just jump on when we saw a good wave. I am using my new technique for getting up when I remember, and it seems to be working a bit better.