Finally got our breakfast-out, with a Spanish omelette with chorizo for me and one with smoked salmon and feta for Tanja. Great way to start the day, and it forced us to get our backsides out of bed to get there while they were still serving breakfast.
We did our poking about the shops again, with me finally getting that Tiki mug (not that I wasn’t half-smug about it), had some gelato, and bought presents. The weather was unusually hot, stingingly hot and ridiculously windy. Like hat-blowing-away, tearing-shirt-from-back windy. So much so that we weren’t walking along the beach for fear of being sandblasted.
Also, as it was Saturday, it was the unofficial first day of Schoolies Week. All of the matriculating youngsters drive up here in packs to surf and drink and generally make nuisances of themselves to the locals. The population on the streets seemed to have tripled and every shady spot was packed full. Possibly thanks to Schoolies, this seemed to be the day for noticing people. So here I shall chronicle our more noticeable noticeables:
A rather large couple making out horizontally on the edge on a park, not ten feet from the path we were walking on. We gave an eye roll and kept going. It was only when I glanced back, I got the view of the *ahem* full moon as his board shorts were nearly to his knees. And she was wearing a dress. Gee-yargh! Didn’t need to see that! Public forum
A kid who looked about 15, and fish belly pale with no shirt, sitting outside the store with 5 cartons of VB beer, two grocery bags full several loaves of no-name white bread, and another bag full of bags of chips. All he needed was a jar of vegemite and he’d have the breakfast of champions.
A couple of young guys, a younger girl, and an older woman walking down the beach, the two guys suddenly, and without warning start wrestling with one another. Throwing each other around, eventually one tossing the other violently onto the sand. “I hope they’re brothers,” I said to Tanja. “Otherwise there’s a whole homoerotic subtext they might not be ready to deal with.” “Why is it okay if they’re brothers?” asked Tanja. “Well,” said I. “Then they’re just being brothers.”
Later in the evening, while walking back to the room, we spotted on several street corners groups of 8-10 young men. They all had beers in their hands, were talking quietly, and all facing inwards with their heads down. It was like a very slow rugby scrum.
Speaking of that evening, we had a lovely dinner at the Pacific Dining Room. We started with cocktails (Coconut and Chilli Martini for me, a Falling Water for Tanja which had Campari, blood orange, watermelon, and mint), then moved on to small sharing plates. We got bread, warm olives, proscuitto with flatbread and onion jam, cured kingfish done in a pastrami style, carrots with air-dried beef and sheep-milk yogurt, and a tomato salad with ricotta and baby leeks. Then came the mains, also shared: reef fish (snapper) in red curry on a bed of rice, cucumber, and sliced wontons; and chicken something-or-other with carrots, baby leeks, and cooked in a bacon reduction sauce. The fish was excellent, but the chicken brought the house down. For dessert we each had a glass of Hungarian tokaji. Tanja had little mini ice-creams covered in Madagascar chocolate, and I had a pressed apple, which was comfit apple slices with little icicles of toffee. VERY nice. We tipped like drunken sailors and toddled home for the night, ignoring or avoiding the drunken adolescents.
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