Parliament House

Before I tell you about my trip to Sydney I'll finish the story of my birthday. I had a lovely day with lots of phone calls, a visit from Alice, Andrew and Sophie and Mim came over for dinner. We had lamb cutlets, a bottle of Moscato and brownies. My new camera has a setting for candle light that takes lovely, no flash photos.


I didn't sleep very well and woke up with a croaky voice and I would have taken the day off if we weren't going to Sydney but I soldiered on. Six women piled into a council-owned car and drove to Sydney with plenty of stops for tea and food. We stayed at the Travelodge in Philip St which was a few minutes walk from Parliament House and, as I most delightfully discovered, on the same block as the Lindt cafe! We reluctantly walked past it and up to Parliament House.


It is a beautiful old building and we had drinks (I had to make sure I always had one in my hand to ward off coughing fits) before going in to dinner. There were lots of categories and awards and in my library category there actually was no winner, but there were two highly commended projects and mine was one of them. The food was lovely and we used the gold-rimmed Parliament House crockery. I was given these flowers to take home.


We listened to a great Latin band and all the repressed city council people sat in their seats while the Griffith and Wagga people got up and danced. We all tucked into our desserts while lots of women left theirs untouched.


We were amongst the last to leave and we only did so after we had a nice wander around, making ourselves at home.


At 8.30 this morning Claire (library manager) and I met for breakfast before heading to Borders to fill a huge trolley with books and DVDs for the library - it was so much fun! We walked back up to the hotel to meet the others and where did we find them? Outside the Lindt cafe texting us to say that they were going in for hot chocolate! There is nothing like hot chocolate made with real, dark chocolate.



So we didn't actually leave Sydney until after 12. I arrived home around 5.30 and Mim came over with Thai takeaway. We watched the disastrously painful Doc Martin and now the tea is made and we are about to have more tea and brownies as we go to Midsomer.