Saturday, 9 March 2013
Southport > Sydney
The body clock, as I remarked to the nephew when he emerged from his cave around seven, is a remarkable thing. By this point I was half way through the ironing and had already done the email bit and a goodly serve of web browsing despite a later than usual bed time last night. With the laundry related activities out of the way I headed downstairs in search of breakfast, and settled for a rather good Eggs Benedict at the surviving footpath eatery outside Australia Fair. There used to be three, one on either side of the entrance and a third across the road that seems to have some affiliation with hospitality courses offered by Shaftson House and doesn't appear to be open on Saturdays. Given what I ended up getting I'm not complaining.
From there it was a matter of killing a bit of time before heading down to catch the 10:06 bus to the Gold Coast Airport and it was just as well I gave myself a fair margin for error. The roadworks associated with the light rail system that's going in looks to be doing their share of traffic disruption, and one of the disruptions affected the bus stop that used to be located outside Australia Fair on Scarborough Street but ain't there at the moment. I should have twigged to this when I crossed the street to get to the ATM outside the relocated Commonwealth Bank branch, but failed to do so and had to retrace my steps to the Gold Coast TAFE, where I'd alighted the previous afternoon. I spent the hour-long bus ride attempting to delete and arrange emails on the iPad, without a great deal of apparent success since Mail refused to allow me to relocate some of them into the trash, and the number of items in All Mailboxes doesn't seem to be diminishing when I start the app up .
I was comfortably early booking in, which meant I had another while to continue running down the battery while taking advantage of the free WiFi. The flight passed without incident, wedged between a younger dude who'd been on the road since some time around six, travelling from Caboolture and an older bloke of the Taswegian persuasion who'd been messed around with cancelled flights and such. On the ground in Sydney I headed straight for the shuttle bus counter, only to learn that the shuttles didn't seem to go to the Rendezvous Sydney Central since it wasn't on our list. Or maybe it was because a phone call established that they, in fact, did. I headed around to the regular shuttle bus stop, found the regular yellow jacketed rotund dude of Middle Eastern extraction and spent the regular wait for the actual shuttle to turn up. We'd struck it lucky first time we tried the service, arriving just in time to catch one that was ready to go and haven't managed to repeat the experience since.
What I have managed to repeat is booking the right hotel, since this was, if I recall correctly, the fourth successive time I've been the first one off the bus. You'd fancy your chances if you're booking something in Haymarket, which we'd done on the way to the Indian Pacific, and I'd landed myself in the same area this time around. In between I've been headed for the Travelodge and the Hilton, so it's not just the area. I'm back at the Great Southern for Bruce, so we'll see what happens next time around, assuming I go for the shuttle rather than the train to Central.
Once I'd checked in, I took myself for a walk around the neighborhood, looking to establish the shortest route to the Entertainment Centre, locate a bottle shop and scope out the eating options. The bottle shop wasn't obvious first time around, but there's a highly rated Thai restaurant a couple of doors down, with a takeaway outlet across the seer and sitting on the edge of Chinatown there are any number of further options, largely in the noodle department.
Back at the hotel I asked about a replacement for the iPad dock/clock radio, and headed back upstairs to do a bit more research on the bottle shop issue while I waited for action on the dock and charger. Once the switch was done, with a couple of addresses to try as possible answers to the bottle shop question, I headed out again. Chinatown Cellars doesn't seem to exist any more, but I found what I was looking for inside the Market building, heading away with a bottle of Peter Lehmann Eden Valley Riesling and a Teusner Joshua GSM which was rather moreish. Dinner came from the Thai takeaway, and the plan was to knock over the Riesling with dinner and have a glass or two of GSM while I read and took things easy with the rest for a nightcap after Neil on Sunday night, but plans have a habit of coming unstuck. The half bottle of Riesling is now the post-Neil wind down...