Francesca and Henk-Jan's Backpacking Trip!

On Saturday, Henk and I decided to take it easy and slept in, then grabbed a great buffet deal at ‘The Shark Hotel’ nearby. Henk really wanted to download the premiere of Heroes, and I wanted to talk to my brother on Skype, so we spent the next few hours on the Internet just surfing and relaxing. Later that evening, we went to King’s Cross… the ‘shadier’ area of Sydney, admiring the some of the more unique window displays in the area.





We visited one of the grocery stores to grab a drink, then picked up dinner at Subway, then returned to the Internet café to talk to Henk’s Mom on Skype and download a few more movies.

Sunday we attempted to get our great buffet deal again, but it wasn’t running, so we went to a food court across from Pitt Street Mall, grabbing a decent butter chicken and a banana smoothie. The majority of Sunday was spent window-shopping! We walked through a bunch of malls and little shopping streets. Henk and I also had the chance to visit the National Opal Museum (museum, with a dinosaur display, but mostly store!) and ‘cash in’ our free Opal gift tickets.







The museum explained the Aboriginal Australian ‘Dreamtime’ story of the opal. It basically goes like this:

‘The Dreamtime creator came down to Earth in a giant rainbow. He gathered together all the tribes and he told them of the laws they were to follow, and he told them he would return when he thought they were wise enough to carry out his plan to have peace forever on Earth. He said they would know when the time had come by the rainbow that would appear in the sky. It would be much bigger and brighter than they had ever seen before and the shape would be so different that they couldn’t mistake it. On the Morillah – the stony ridges where the rainbow had rested while he waited for the Dreamtime creator – there was a giant area of rocks and pebbles. The sun rose the next morning, shining its light on the rocks and pebbles, having all the colors of the rainbow – the first opals.’

I predicted that we were going to get an extremely rough opal rock from our free tickets, but our gift was actually a really cool kangaroo pin with a tiny polished opal in it! Nice! We even picked up an extra opal pin as a gift for my Uncle Randy, since he told us he really wanted an opal from Australia. (We usually get him ‘Hard Rock Café’ pins, but we have yet to find a Hard Rock Café on this trip!!) UNCLE RANDY, HERE IS YOUR GIFT!



Anyways, next we walked towards the Opera House again, because it was a beautiful day, and I really thought we should just spend more time admiring the awesomeness of Sydney’s architectural masterpiece. While we were near the Harbour, we read about another Aboriginal story, this time about ‘Mimi Spirits.’ Mimi Spirits are ‘tall, thin beings that live in the rocky northern Australia as spirits. Before the coming of the Aboriginal people, they had human forms. The Mimi are generally harmless but on occasion can be mischievous. When Aboriginal people first came to northern Australia, the Mimi taught them how to hunt and cook kangaroos and other animals. They also did the first rock paintings and taught Aboriginal people how to paint.'

Here is an Aboriginal artistic interpretation of Mimi Spirits!



As we walked back towards the hostel, I was feeling like a snack, and Henk and I ended up splitting a Red Velvet cupcake. Delicious! Topped with cream-cheese buttercream and a red sugar heart!



We continued our shopping that evening in the Queen Victoria Building, but we’ll tell you about that building a bit later. I will let you all know that we spent time there dressing Henk up as an Australian cowboy! He looks pretty good in that hat, I have to say. :P



Talk to everyone later,

Francesca