Australia Take 3 day 1

I'm going to pretend like nothing's changed, that I've been posting regularly all along and that me jumping right into this post is perfectly natural. None of those things are true, but if I keep waiting to post until I can catch you up completely I'll forget all the important details. We'll also pretend like it hasn't been two months since these things happened, and talk about them in fake real time. Now, without further ado.
W's parents were taking this really fabulous cruise from San Francisco to Sydney with lot's of island hopping in between. We thought for a long time about how to join them on the trip, and W planned to meet them in Sydney while I stayed home and worked. Well, I suddenly found myself without meaningful work again, and had the flexibility to ride along too. We jumped into a couple of Business class seats on the Sydney flight, with the plan to stay there for a few days and then meet the in-laws . We hadn't been to the movies all summer long, so a 14 hour flight in early November is filled with summer blockbusters letting you get caught up at a time when you have nothing better to do anyway. On arrival in Sydney we rode in to the city with the flight crew, and hung out around the Hotel they stay in and had some food at harbourside until we met up with new Aussie buddy Paul. Paul is the husband of one of W's flying co-workers, and bent over backwards to make sure we enjoyed our stay. He picked us up downtown and took us back to his place in North Sydney. As you can see Paul and have an incredible view of all the good stuff in town, so our accommodations were pretty spectacular. We just kind of piddled around downtown for a while, and then met Paul so he could take us to a favorite local Pub for dinner. I was hoping I could find the name of it someplace, but alas this is what you get when you wait 3 months to tell a story. As I'm sitting here I'm thinking, maybe I ought to come down to one post here, because the details about this part of the trip are pretty fuzzy for me. Here's what I do know. We had the better part of 2 whole days in Sydney, and on each of the two nights we went to dinner with Paul. The first night was a trip to the North Sydney leagues club with a pilot who works for the same company as W and the third was a local pub where W still talks about the lamb burger she got, with a guest appearence by one more fellow employee . We enjoyed more than our share of wine and beer over the two day stint, and more than our share of local "home style" cuisine. Think of it as Aussie comfort food, with a beer. We found lots of little food courts to have cheap food on the go, and we even made the trip over to Manly one day. We had lunch at one of the many little restaurants in the tourist stip the day we were there, and took an easy walk. W is still suffering from our walk up to the monastery, so our tourism related walks are pretty short these days. we walked around Manly some, checking out the flora and fauna. Check out the parrots that come hang out on Paul's patio too, they practically come in the house looking for the honey he puts in that bowl.