Week sixteen: Scary hairy lairy Mary canary - Kirsty's 21st birthday weekend

This has been a week of contrasts. Library/nightclub. Newcastle/Sydney. 5km runs/krispy kremes. I know which part of the week I preferred... Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were library days. I hate the library, seagrass reports are boring, no-one told me I would have to do work on a year abroad... Etcetera. You get the drift.

Wednesday was Dom's birthday, so we left the library early to head to Woolies and buy some ingredients for the Epic Cake of Dreams. Devils food cake, with flake bites mixed in, sandwiched with chocolate fudge frosting and covered in caramel buttons and flake bites. Om nom nom. We headed to Church Street, where Lars was cooking, and surprised Dom with his cake, before heading over to the Great Northern for a quick drink.

MONSTER CAKE.

Thursday was Kirsty's 21st birthday. It began, as ever, in the library, feverishly finishing my report into the effects of jetty construction upon seagrass meadows in Myall Lakes National Park... Yawn. Once that was finished and submitted - my final piece of coursework for the semester(!) - we headed into town for a meal at Coco Monde, the chocolateria from heaven. We bought Kirst a birthday hazelnut hot chocolate as she was yet to experience its magic; and we bought chocolate fondue plates between us. They were AMAZING. You got a whole bowl of melted chocolate (we went for milk chocolate), and a plate of brownies, shortbread, fruit (including BANANAS!!!) and honeycomb. Mmmm. They even threw in a free plate of extra dipping bits when we ran out. We just about managed to stumble back to Anna's through our sugar haze, where we spent the evening collapsed on the sofa, watching Beauty and the Geek. Classy.

Birthday fondue!

GO-LO presents are the best presents.

On Friday morning I got up and headed to my lecture, before realising that it was actually just recapping everything I learned in Behavioural Ecology at UEA last year; so I skipped out, bumped into Nathan and headed to NUSA with him for a free cuppa and  PB&J on toast. Yum.

I packed up my stuff over lunchtime and headed with the girls to the station. It was time for the proper 21st birthday celebrations to begin! We got to Sydney at 6ish and went to check into the hostel - where the cheapest available room had been a 32-bed dorm. It would be an adventure, right?! In actual fact, Nomads managed to lose our booking, so we ended up getting a free upgrade to a three-person private room with private bathroom. Despite having 4 of us in a 3-bed room, it was definitely a better deal. Win.

We dumped our bags and got showered and dressed up, before starting on the vino. In bottles, not bags. Impressive, I know. At 8pm-ish, a voice coming out of ceiling instructed us to go down to the 1st floor for free wine and cheese (read: goon and cheddar). After a brief moment of terror ("Is that you, god?!") we located the mystery loud speaker on the ceiling and headed down to the bar. We had some drinks and caught a glimpse of a boxing kangaroo tattoo on an Irish boys bum, then headed out to Darling Harbour for some cocktails. We couldn't find the fabled Friday Night Happy Hour bar, so ended up in an extortionately overpriced joint selling cocktails for $17. Ouch. Once the other girls had their fill (I'm from Yorkshire. It is physically impossible for me to spend that amount on a cocktail, I'm just too tight with money), we went on to Scary Canary for the Red Cup Party, where we met up with some of Kirst's friends from Weeee-als.. We got very excited at the sight of proper American red solo cups - and even more excited at the prospect of a free drink, and $4 drinks thereafter. Spirits! Affordable spirits! We stayed at Scary Canary for the rest of the night, until our feet were bruised and our eyelids were heavy with vodka.

Suited and Booted.

TWENTY-FIVE LITRES OF GOON. Say what.

Liz was very excited about the red cups.

...As was Kirsty.

Screw it, we were all pretty excited.

Messy girl.

We awoke on Saturday morning feeling a little worse for wear, and so we showered and dressed and crawled across the road to Kafe Kaz (a misleadingly tacky name for a fairly nice place), where we gorged upon eggs and mushrooms on toast, and smoothies. Mmmm. Afterwards, we headed over to Paddy's Markets to find some Hallowe'en costume inspiration for Anna's party on Monday. Inspiration was thin on the ground, but I did manage to get into a heated discussion with a stall holder. What a lovely woman. Naat.

Anna got the morning train to Sydney and joined us at the markets, before we strolled off in the direction of Westfield. Liz and I slipped away from the rest, and went to buy Kirst's birthday present - a silver bracelet from Thomas Sabo - under the pretence of buying my Dad a book. Sorry to break it to you Dad, there is no book.

In the afternoon, we perused the Sydney Food and Wine Festival in Hyde Park, and found a disappointing lack of freebies. We did, however, find a large gathering of the undead, due to the Hallowe'en Zombie Walk taking place. It was a fairly impressive sight - watching the zombies gather, natter amongst themselves and nibble on McFlurries - hardly an authentically zombie food source, but it was hot so I presume brains didn't appeal.

We spent a while sitting in Hyde Park, watching the performers, erm, perform, and splashing in the fountain to cool down. Afterwards, we headed back to Darling Harbour for a dinner of Greek salads and roast veggie turkish toasties. Mmm.

My bargain $1 charity bracelets.

Splish splash.

Darling Harbour baby!

The boys were scheduled to get in from Fiji, where they've spent the past week, at 7pm ish; so after our early dinner we headed back to the hostel to get showered and changed. The boys got to the hostel at half 7ish, where we had some wine and fijian rum (bleurghhhh) and a catch up. We also gave Kirsty her present, which she loved. Yay :) There were fireworks at Darling Harbour on Saturday night, so we went along to watch them. They were gorgeous, if a little short-lived.

Darling Harbour by night.

Once the last whizzes and bangs had died away, we chanced upon a cocktail bar with a 2-for-1 happy hour on. The drinks were gorgeous - raspberry mojitos were my favourite - and pretty potent. After a few hours our purses and our heads were much lighter...

Strawberry daiquiri!

Mmmmm raspberry mojito! <3

After an unsuccessful quest to find Scary Canary again, we stumbled upon a Cuban salsa bar. It had such a good atmosphere - the live band was amazing, and the lead singer gave us salsa lessons when our own attempts failed. The walls were all covered in quotes and messages, such as "Life may not always be the party you expected, but while we're here we may as well dance!" It was so much fun, and as Kirsty told me, "It sounds like Nandos! You can't dance here, you're vegetarian."

...Quite.

Our new cuban friend.

Shake yo' maracas Anna!

Once I finished my appalling attempts at Spanish, and Kirst gave up on teaching the uninterested barman Welsh, we headed on to the Three Wise Monkeys, where we were treated to more free drinks thanks to a Bundy rum promotion. Oh dear. Things got messier from there, as Roseanna fell in a fountain and we lost Liz and Anna. We all ended up back at the hostel, exhausted and drunk and in fits of apparently meaningless laughter.

Sunday morning called for another trip to Kafe Kaz, where I stuck my face into a large pile of blueberry pancakes. The rest of the guys did similar things to nutella croissants/beans on toast/bacon sandwiches etc. Mmmmm.

Mmmmm perfection.

After breakfast, Josh headed back up to Newy to finish off his Seagrasses report, whilst the rest of us had a girls day in Sydney. We didn't really do much.... We sunbathed by the opera house. We browsed a market and stole as many free nibbles as we could. We grabbed lunch by Circular Quay. Kirsty had a face-off with a hungry ibis in the Botanical Gardens (the ibis won). We had a nap in the Botanical Gardens. I finally had the Krispy Kreme I had been lusting after all weekend.... It was a fun, chilled way to end a fairly hectic and amazing weekend.

The girls :)

<3

I have now officially handed in all work for this semester. I have one pre-exam lecture left. Where has all the time gone?! I'm almost a third of the way through my year abroad. WOAH, WOAH, WOAH, SLOW DOWN! I'm not ready to leave quite yet. There is so much left to see.