Once Were Wild was once number one but then…

So today was Melbourne Cup day! Surprisingly quite exciting, considering it’s a horse race and I don’t generally find horse races very interesting. But it’s a huge thing here and everyone gets very excited and regular old pubs charge for entry and people get all dressed up and the office throws a little mid-afternoon fest with chips and hummus and wine and stuff. I was determined to get into the spirit, so I bet a whole five dollars on a horse! And for the first three quarters of the race, my horse, named Once Were Wild, was leading by a mile! But obviously that was a bad strategy because she used up all her energy and then all the other horses came up and took all her glory. Didn’t even place. *sigh* I swear, there were a handful of signs telling me my horse was fate, but fate let me down.

Anyway, my parents have also been here since Saturday! And we got a lot accomplished that day! So eager to see everything, we walked pretty much the entire city of Sydney till there was nothing left to see, my mom volunteered to participate in a contortionist’s street show, and then when we still had hours left in the day we decided to head down to Melbourne and made it back on the last flight by about 3 am! …. No, not really. I just said that because my mom has said a) she will be reading this and b) she was so jetlagged on Saturday that she doesn’t remember any of it, so I figured I could make anything up and she might just believe it. We did see a contortionist show, though! The girl squeezed herself into a box. However, I saw the same girl doing the same show with all the same jokes a few weeks ago at the Crow’s Nest festival, so I was less impressed.

We actually took a stroll around the neighborhood a bit, across the bridge, through the market at The Rocks where we also stopped for lunch, walked over to the Opera house (and bought tickets for a show tomorrow night!), a little bit more through the city and then headed back by train. Sunday involved a bit of shopping and a walk over to Darling Harbour, which I had actually not seen yet apart from a brief glimpse after dark last week Friday. It was very nice, very impressive. Got tapas for a late lunch, and my dad peer pressured me and mom into ordering a whole litre of sangria even though we each only wanted a glass…

In the last couple days they’ve been enjoying the city on their own while I go to work – today they went to the zoo and saw lots of horrible creatures but also koalas and kangaroos and stuff, which I haven’t seen yet – I have a feeling by the time they go, they’ll have seen a lot I haven’t.

You may also recall my last post of about a week and a half ago mentioned me getting caught in a crazy downpour – I think that was the cause of me waking up a few days later with a pretty bad cold, which I’ve been suffering through since. Yesterday I got sent home from work early because I “sounded like crap”. But I think I’m on the mend now, thankfully. I’ve been running out of tissues!