Quaint little Perth and Fremantle

Thursday, October 30th

I woke up at 7am to go for a run. Steph decided to give it a miss originally, but later on I saw her running when I ran back. The run around Subiaco was really nice. The houses were really nice and big. This was the first time on this trip that I ran by myself. It was really nice, besides the fact that I don't love my new earphones. I much rather have plug-in earphones. So I followed signs and ran towards the city beach. Running alone gave me a sense of tranquility and ability to think about things in general...about what I want in life. Unfortunately it was just thinking with no resolutions. In time there will be answers...I hope.

We had healthy Kellogg's cereal with strawberries for breakfast, then we headed off to Subiaco. I was a bit under dressed since the warmest thing I head was a button down long sleeves polo and a rain jacket. Good thing I kept my jeans and didn't ship them home.

Our first stop was to vodafone to purchase sim cards. We got a pretty good deal, and got to do some star spotting. We saw Ben Cousins (the rep told us), an Australian football player that is supposedly a bad boy. He was the captain of the Australian football team at one point. He is supposed to be a hot shot with lots of girls. I guess we should of taken a photo.

At Subiaco we did some quick browsing, which always involves clothes. Steph bought a pair of really cute flats from Hobbs and a pair of leggings. Subiaco has a lot of trendy little shops, very cute.

We then headed to the city to check out some stores and the art gallery of western australia. The art gallery was ok. One of the most well known exhibits there is of Aboriginal art in Australia. We didn't really appreciate it that much, but it was interesting to learn about it. Some of the paintings literally use glitter puffy paint, aka synthetic polymer paint. Too funny. There were also some interesting ones that use dots to form patterns. Steph liked the dreaming of the possum painting the most. Dreaming is an indigenous "bible". Everything creates through dreams, present and past creations.

We then headed outside to walk around again. We saw these really neat aerial shots displayed outside. Check them out on Earthfromabove.com.au and Yannarthusbertrand.org The photos are awesome. He must of waited for clear clear days to shoot them from a helicopter.

Perth is pretty small quaint city. Very relaxed laid back people. There wasn't much wandering for us to do. We even wandered into Target to realize it was different from the ones in the States...for the worse that is. Good thing my contiki buddy craig called and gave me some tips. After some convincing, we decided Fremantle is the way to go.

Fremantle is the second-largest city on the west coast. It's still the major state port since Europeans first settled in Australia in the early 1800s. The island is very cute. Very nice colonial buildings. We walked down to cicerello's on mews road to have the famous fish-and-chips. Since we were eating dinner fairly early because we were meeting Steph and Bernice's cousins at 6pm, we decided to share one amongst the three of us. It was legendary and really good. The batter was light and stuck on the fresh fish...yummmm. With full bellies we did our leisurely (sort of) stroll down south terrace (cappuccino strip). The buildings are really pretty.

Hurriedly at 5pm we rushed onto the train back to the city. We arrived at the train station 15mins before dinner. We assumed the yakatori restaurant wasn't far since the city wasn't that big, but we were wrong. We underestimated the size of the suburbs. It took us 30mins to get there, so we were a good 15mins late. Steph's cousins are roughly our age, married with kids. Their husbands were really nice and so were the kids. Tyler was 5 yrs old and sat right next to me. He loved playing his video game. Dylan was also a very active young boy. We were a fan of them. After dinner we headed to an ice cream waffle place where we shared two of them. Bernice, Steph and I shared a cookies and cream (lots of cookies) and vanilla bean ice cream waffle.

At roughly 8:30pm, we met up with my old contiki pals at Queens. Craig, Blake and Matt are my old friends from the contiki tour I did after college. It was really good catching up with them. It's been 6 years already since we last met, so who knows when are we going to catch up again. But the magic of facebook keeps us connected. It was fun talking about the past and where people are now. The most amazing thing about the contiki trip was tracey and blake met, got married, and have a beautiful girl named chloe. Who would guess contiki brings lovers together. Matt is the weather forecaster for western australia. He said the weather will not be beautiful until sunday, but we are leaving for Melbourne on Saturday night. Bummer. It's been really chilly here and the lack of warm clothes is not helping. Craig just took his last uni class that night. He's been dating a girl since april, and plans on buying a block of land with her. True love.

At around 11pm, we called it quits. Matt was nice enough to drive us back. We were all pretty tired, so it was good to finally snooze.