Didn’t get to update last night because Joe went out drinking. Until gone midnight. He claims it was work, but it was drinking. The last day of his conference was yesterday; today he was in the office.<\/p>\n
So yesterday we had breakfast and then I headed down to Circular Quay to figure out the ferries. Got on the ferry to Parramatta and had a lovely trip up the Parramatta River. Saw loads of water birds. As you go up the river narrows until it ends in Parramatta in a weir. The river isn’t navigatable from that point. The places I wanted to see were opposite ways along the river and as I’d left a bit late I could only do one direction. I went to Elizabeth Farm and Experimental Farm.<\/p>\n
It’s a lovely walk along the river. Not sure about the town as I didn’t really go in, just along the river to the historical homes. It was a bit hotter up there and had to climb up to the houses. Both are really lovely. I spent time at Elizabeth Farm wandering about on my own. It’s a living museum with all replicas, so you can sit in the chairs, read the books, touch and look at everything. It’s quite a nice place. As an added bonus there was a bushy tail possum hanging out in the oak tree in the courtyard, nomming on oak leaves. <\/p>\n
I then walked over to Experimental Farm and they do tours there. I wasn’t really given the option not to have the tour and I got the impression I may have been the only visitor that day! The volunteers are very nice and chatty and the home is interesting. It was called Experimental Farm because it was a social experiment to see if the convicts could sustain themselves, not because they were experimenting to see if crops would grow. <\/p>\n
From the farmhouse you could see the smoke plume from the bush fires. The city has been smoky all week and tonight it’s all yellowy orange light and dim. Very overcast heavy humid sort of day. Yesterday was bright sunshine! So the ferry trip was lovely in the sunshine.<\/p>\n
Up a little later this morning, but still early. Took our time getting ready, then had breakfast, then Joe headed off to the office. I went off to figure out a bus route to Elizabeth Bay House. That’s the 311 which does a bit of a loop around Sydney – I got off and got back on the bus at the exact same stop and the return trip was quite different from the trip out! <\/p>\n
Elizabeth Bay is lovely and the house is beautiful. The oval saloon with the sweeping staircase is wonderful and I really enjoyed looking around. There weren’t loads of people there either, but they did start coming in as I was leaving. Looked like they may have been doing a lunch in the dining room.<\/p>\n
Decided to have a shorter quieter day today and sort out stuff. So back at the room updating the blog and sorting! Will try to get photos up later!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Didn’t get to update last night because Joe went out drinking. Until gone midnight. He claims it was work, but it was drinking. The last day of his conference was yesterday; today he was in the office. So yesterday we had breakfast and then I headed down to Circular Quay to figure out the ferries. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[14,4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-14u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2405,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/11\/ich-bin-ein-berliner\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":0},"title":"Ich bin ein Berliner","date":"Sunday, 11 September 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So Berlin. Joe was in Holland for work stuff, so I came over on the ferry and met up with him on the train in Hengelo. Long journey! Left work at 5 on Friday, up to Harwich and on the ferry, dinner and sleep, in Hoek van Holland at 8\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":316,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/27\/canyons\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":1},"title":"Canyons","date":"Sunday, 27 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Up far too early. Had a wake up call for 4.30am scheduled but they rang at 4am. ARG. We rolled over, set another alarm, and tried to go back to sleep. Up at 4.30 and first thing is put on the coffee. Then get ready. Down to the front by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4195,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/01\/happy-new-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":2},"title":"Happy New Year!","date":"Wednesday, 1 January 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"So out to Southbank last night to board our boat for our new year's cruise. We were early, as always! But soon loaded on and we had what we thought was the best table on the boat - we were on the lower deck but right at the bow. We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":159,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/20\/still-working\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":3},"title":"Still working","date":"Friday, 20 June 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been a busy couple of days! Wednesday we got up early and were collected by our driver to go out to Ocho Rios. After a lovely drive though the gorges, we arrived at Dunn River Falls. You can take the path down along the falls to the beach where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4087,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/03\/22\/roman-around\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":4},"title":"Roman around","date":"Friday, 22 March 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"That's Joe's title. Not mine.\u00a0 We walked today. Well, today isn't over, but we'll be doing more walking this evening. We started out on the metro though to the Vatican - we did that today because Monday we'll be doing it again at stupid o'clock. Found the nearest metro station\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":368,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/06\/to-see-orchid\/","url_meta":{"origin":4122,"position":5},"title":"To see orchids","date":"Sunday, 6 June 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We have been trying to get out to Cheshunt, to see the orchids in the Lee Valley Park. The are several trails and boardwalks . We took the train to Cheshunt and walked to where we thought the start of the walk was - we got it wrong :). Where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dyslexic Discourse"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4125,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4122\/revisions\/4125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}