Anna's 21st

So our darling little Anna turned 21 last week! The proposed plan was to meet at hers at 5pm and then go over to her Dad and partner's snazzy hotel, Blue Sydney, for a drink, and then on to dinner by 7.30pm. In true Anna style, she was still at Bondi Junction shopping for a dress at 5.15pm and had got caught in a tropical thunderstorm whilst shopping and so not only did she still need to make the 20 min journey home and get ready in the space of fifteen minutes, she also had to shower and wash her hair all over again. This meant that the rest of us all congregated in the corridor outside her room in college and waited, spying on the new freshers who have all just begun their very first semester of university. Talent spotting, as we like to call it.

Finally she made it back, new dress in hand, and we called the restaurant to push the reservation back to give us some more time. After lots of scrambling around from Anna and a few hurried photos on her balcony, we hopped into cabs and zoomed down to Wooloomooloo Warf to meet her Dad and Geraldine at their hotel. 

The bar was amazing, very swanky with awesomely comfy booths to sit in, set in the middle of the hotel with all the rooms overlooking like a kind of courtyard. Hard to explain but basically the whole hotel is a converted shipping yard and is just very modern with high ceilings and glass lifts and stuff. We chose some yummy cocktails made with 42Below vodka as recommended by Ciclely - passionfruit, kiwi and honey to be precise. Delicious! Check out their funky website too.

After a little bit of prezzie opening we went to the restaurant called O Bar & Dining which is a revolving restaurant on the 47th floor in a building in Worlds Square, George St. The view was, of course, incredible and the novelty of the revolving room didn't ware off for the entire 2 hours we spent at dinner. We ordered several more cocktails and had a delicious three course meal, so nice to be able to have some decent fish! (Poor student = no fish.) The whole evening was such fun and a great girly celebration together of our gorgeous Anna. Many hilarious speeches and stifled giggling as we stealthily printed a hand print on the glass so that we knew when we had done a full resolution....!  (It takes 1hr45mins just so y'know.) Thank you to Peter and Geraldine for treating us to such a nice meal, a very special evening. If you've never been to O Bar, then for gods sake go as the views are unforgettable and the food is amazing. Yummmmmm.

Anna's tiny weeny hands! 

Next on the birthday celebration list was a night out in Sydney on Thursday. We all met for drinks again on Anna's balcony which is 7 floors up and has the most outrageous view of the whole university, Randwick Racecorse, and the city skyline in the distance. I really wish my phone could capture how good her view is but sadly it doesn't do it any justice so just imagine twinkly city lights far away. 

We all then went down to Opera Bar and had loads of fun their ordering cocktails and watching them be made at the special pick up point, and just generally enjoying the buzzy atmosphere of the place. It really is such a special place to be, out in the open under the sky, drinking cocktails with your best friends, right next to one of the most iconic buildings in the world. So lucky! There's always live music too and so you can guarantee a good time almost any night of the week.

After that, we trooped up George St and went to The Ivy for a good dance. I bumped into a whole load of people from work which was nice and we had a big old catch up. Some how we all ended up in the same area on the top floor right by the bar with enormous comfy sofa to sit on - it was ideal! Needless to say, we made it our base and partied away into the early hours of the night.

Sober....

Trying to get Harry to stand still for a photo to send home

The special Anna Dance

Happy Birthday gorgeous girl and thank you for being such an amazing friend. Here's to your 22nd year, lets hope it's as good as the last!

B

Grace's Massage

By chance, as well as Oli, Grace also bought me a massage for my birthday - can't complain! We hadn't found time to go together yet, but eventually we were both free on Tuesday and met at Circular Quay and caught the ferry across the harbour to Neutral Bay. Seeing as we live in the Eastern Suburbs below in Sydney, we hardly spend any time in the Northern Beaches, so it was nice to go on a little adventure.

We went to this lovely little place called Thai Waya and had the most relaxing full body thai massage. It was very different to the one I had on my spa day, as at Park Hyatt they used a lot more oil etc. and this massage was more about working out the knots and all our stress from exams (well, Grace's stress.... I'm not feeling particularly stressed at the moment!). They properly climbed all over us and even used their knees to massage us! Kinda bizarre but actually amazing. I'm going to have to be careful not to get too used to weekly massages...!

Afterwards we stopped by a bar right next door called Cactus Blue and decided we would just have 'one drink' before we caught the ferry back. Several drinks and a free birthday-shot of absinthe on the house (!? and also bleugh) from the barman later, we finally left. We should have seen that coming.... look at the size of our wine glasses buckets.....!

The ferry ride home back into Circular Quay was amazing. Its nice to get out on the water sometimes and properly take in the Opera House and the bridge from a different perspective. The city is always so impressive at night.

Thank you Gracie for a lovely girly evening! Loving the fact that I've somehow managed to drag my birthday out for a good three weeks....

B

Rollin' With The Celebs

So, I didn't mention it as we thought it was pretty insignificant at the time, but towards the end of our dinner at Catalina's on my birthday, a big group of very fancily dressed people came in and sat at a table right next to us. The were all clutching 'Vogue' goody bags and seemed to think that they were all pretty important. Pah, whatever, the Birthday Princess was in da house. They aint got nothin' on me and my galz.

One of the waiters asked us if we wanted to move as he expected that group to get pretty noisy but we said that we were fine, mainly because we were enjoying people watching. There was one women who was wearing the most ridiculously ostentatious dress I have ever seen, so much of it that she could hardly sit down, but so little of it that you could see right through the fabric to her bar legs. Very strange for a restaurant... what a silly dress. Goose bumped into her in the loos and chirped up "Oh you look... nice, where have you been?" and apparently she just gave her a blank look and muttered something about a Vogue magazine launch. Oh really? Cool. Well, we're just going to carry on with our evening and not really pay you much attention, giving you funny looks as you kind of float above your seat because you can't sit properly in your big pretentious purple poofy dress.

Until, a couple of days later, Goose spotted this....

Oh. 

Shit. 

So dress lady was kinda important then. And her silly dress? Oh, just a bit of Dior haute couture we've got there. What a RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE MAGICAL FAIRY QUEEN DESIGNER silly dress. I wish I'd touched it. It's still a silly dress, and that's $50,000s worth of purple netting wasted on, well, still being able to see her legs... but I'll never get that close to a dress like that ever again. 

Perhaps Erica thought Goose was just trying to play it cool when they were in the loo together, or perhaps she realised we were just clueless British girls who don't know any Australia celebs. (I still don't know who she is....)

You can have a little look at her Vogue interview here and some more shots of her big celebratory day as a Vogue cover girl with all her other famous fashionista pals here. 

Even though it feels like a bit of a whoops on our behalf, I quite enjoy that we were completely oblivious to the fact that she was famous and just carried on as normal. That dress though....

B

Surprise Spa Day

So the other day, Goose suddenly dropped into conversation that we were 'busy' on Thursday afternoon and that I had to keep from 1pm onwards free. After Oli saying that 'his present wasn't arriving in the post' I put two and two together and knew that they were up to something.... Both furiously denied it but I was awfully suspicious and was very nervous about whatever adventure they had planned for me. Worried to the point where I was more scared about 1pm coming around that the exam I had at 12pm. 

Finally, I met Goose and she shoved me in a taxi and whisked me away into the city for a.... SPA DAY! I was correct in my suspicious of her and Oli sneaky-skeakying behind my back and this whole afternoon, all the treatments and everything for both of us, was a prezzie from Oli. 

On the way she read me out a confirmation email about what pampering we were going to receive and we arrived 20mins later at Park Hyatt Hotel Spa in The Rocks just on the western side of Sydney Harbour. We were chaperoned from our taxi into the hotel and directed upstairs to the spa - Goose even took the lift! Up there we were greeted by a lovely woman who told us that we were receiving an hour full body massage and an hour facial. HOUR FULL BODY MASSAGE!? Genuinely the best news I've ever heard. 

She then gave us some locker wristband things and showed us to the changing rooms and told us we could go and relax in their rooftop pool for half an hour. We changed into our bikinis and snuggled into those amazing fluffy white dressing gowns thats spas have, and headed up to the pool, where we were greeted with the most incredible view and two glasses of champagne!

Thats a 'two-one' I'm doing, not a 'fuck-off'

We had a little swim and then headed down to our spa room for our massage and facial. The two hours flew by and we both went into some kind of trance state and then all too soon we were left alone to get changed and go back to the real world. 

We delayed the reality check a little by venturing back up to the pool and lounging in our robes for a bit, enjoying the view and singing Oli's praises, but then eventually said a HUGE thank you to the staff and stumbled back to normal life. We wandered around the harbour and The Rocks for a while and found this little beauty....

I WANT ONE! I'm going to move to Sydney and drive it back and forth from my house to the spa and back again.

What a lovely spoiley surprise day! Oliver, congratulations, you done good boy, and how nice that Goosey and I could enjoy it together. An enormous thank you from both of us. I don't know why I was so worried.... silly me.

B