Sunday in Sydney

One of the benefits of flying back a day early from Cairns was that Ash and I had a full day back in Manly to decompress after that break-neck pace backpacking tour. Until I looked at a full map of Australia, I really didn't appreciate how much territory we were attempting to cover in what I now realize is a very short period of time. We essentially traveled the distance from Miami to Maine in two weeks, picking 5 locations to spend 1 - 3 days exploring. Uhh, crazy. And exhausting.

Side note - the Cairns airport is considered a regional airport in Australia, but it's pretty "big." I mean, it's even got a few shops in it. And of course, a coffee bar. All 22 or so gates in the domestic terminal are in the same circular building. Cute. Get's the job done.

So Sunday, Ash and I sleep in, getting up just in time to take her dad and mom out for brunch to celebrate her dad's birthday, and tell them all about our trip. We went out to this place called the Bower Restaurant, and I learned that when the Corso was opened, the Bower and another restaurant on the Corso entered into a huge feud as to who was allowed to have table space on the actual Corso...Apparently there has been bitter blood between the two restaurants for a long time. However, that didn't affect the quality of the food. I had a really great serving of lemon sugar crepes with bacon. Tasty! Also, while we were enjoying our meal, we saw a demo of a sea rescue mission by the Australian Navy Corps on Manly beach, as well as an awareness march for free speech injustices in China, China's treatment of the Tibetian monks and various other political prisoners in countries all over the world. Definitely not something I'd see in America.

Ash and I then wandered around Manly for the rest of the morning, as I proceeded to leave a good chunk of my bank account at various stores around town. We went to a fabulous paper goods store called Pulp that was FULL of beautiful papers, note cards, amazing wedding invitation ideas and hilarious knick knacks. I got a few things for my classroom there and some really beautiful papers that I just found to be really inspiring. Being at that store made me want to a) drop everything and just design cards and wedding invitations for a living and b) become a buyer of artistic papers for some specialty design store. Uhh, that store was gorgeous.

We also stopped by a paint-you-own canvas store called Procreate. This guy has set up shop helping people paint their very own, personal paintings. He has artists who just use his space for studios, I saw a young kid making a huge painting of traveling through Italy, Kindergarten classes who made paintings to raise money for their school, etc. It's a brilliant idea, and it's really evident that he enjoys what he does. Very, very cool.

After walking around and around for a long time, Ash and I finally got ourselves home and changed for church. Ash goes to an emergent church called Small Boat, and they meet on Sunday evenings for dinner and a service. The service follows a "Bells" order: Blessing, Eating, Listening, Learning and Sent-ness, each portion based upon the central mission of the church group. This church service is about as non-traditional as you can get, and as far from the style of church that I was raised in, but culturally, I feel really comfortable in that kind of a setting. The first time I attended Small Boat, I didn't realize until I was on the way home that we hadn't sung. But the service was totally genuine. The church body is composed of a bunch of people who are visually artistic (the service is held in an art gallery called the Art Sanctuary), so it's much less authentic for them to sing, because they aren't gifted that way. So instead of having an inauthentic portion of a church service, they just choose not to include "singing worship" in their order...

Anyway, this particular evening, the Listening portion was entitled God is a DJ, and members were asked to send in songs that have impacted their relationship with God in some way. We listened to a really eclectic mix that included Van Halen, Ben Harper, U2, etc. During the trip, when we were in the tablelands, Ash and I had been talking about our opinions regarding the Christian music industry and why we were attracted to or wary of the whole "industry." It was really interesting after that conversation to being amongst other Christians who were attracted to God via "non-Christian" music...

I got to meet several people who are in Ash's bible study, which is always good. It's nice to meet the support system that nurtures and cradles your friends, especially when they are on the other side of the world.

Anyway, after church, Ash and I headed to Artichoke, a coffee house/restaurant/live music venue/sangria bar/live model drawing place to partake in the live music venue/sangria aspect of the place. Very fun - we heard blues from a very eclectic mix of musicians. The lead guitarist was from France, and was my age or younger, the bassist seemed to be local and was probably late 40s, the alto sax player was probably 70 and in all black and the sometimes there, sometimes not rhythm guitar/drummer was maybe late 30's. And not French. Weird mix. But great music. The sangria was also FABULOUS - very fruity and not too red-winey.

Because we had slept in until 11am, we were still pumped and ready for action at 10:30pm on a Sunday night, so we wandered down to the Wharf to the Wharf Restaurant to see if we could get a table with a beautiful night view of Manly Harbour...but, much to our schagrine, we had closed down Manly at Artichoke. Oh well. Back to the house we go to watch Beaches, the number one chick flick of all time. What a way to end the day(o: