A brief touch on the the previous post. We went to a local Italian restaurant for dinner. We’re still a little out of wack with the timezone shift so we planned to have an early dinner and early to bed.
There turned out to be a minor flaw in our thinking here, as early dinner on a Saturday night in Fremantle equals family dinner time. The restaurant we’d chosen, while extremely popular, was literally filled with families, most with more than one child. Kids were using the restaurant as a sort of playground, running around playing hide and seek.
We pushed through and order our dinner. Kath, Leanne and I had a trio of dips and pizza bianco (white pizza). Pizza base was nice, as were the dips, but one was quite salty. Gary had a bruschetta which looked pretty good.
We were staggering our ordering and by the time our entree’s came out, most of the kids were gone and it was quite pleasant. Kath and I shared Stuffed Squid and Stuffed Mushrooms, Leanne had Zuppa (Soup) and Gary had crumbed pike. These were all pretty tasty. We ummed and arred over more savoury but decided to move onto desert before heading back.
Leanne & Gary had a rather unusual Tiramisu, with chocolate buttons inside (??). Kath had a sticky date pudding with butterscotch and ice cream and I had a chocolate & walnut brownie, which was really just a cake, also with ice cream.
Sunday was a day for visiting family and friends. Breakfast started out at home and we headed off to the north side of Perth to meet up with Kath & Leanne’s Aunty Ngaere. The drive was lovely, meandering along the coast line. We saw a couple of cruise ships docked at the port where our ship will be in a few days.
On the way up the coast we passed some great spots, like Cottesloe beach and Scarborough beach. Everything was super busy, with lots of weekend activities going on. Art displays, water activities, charity runs, cycling events. Perth folks take their weekends seriously, there were people everywhere!!
We had a great catch up with the family, with one of Kath’s cousins, Justin and his wife, Sue coming along. We went out to lunch at a place called “Hilliary’s”, which is well know to locals and a massive harbour with beautiful boats, amazing facilities for kids like a massive water slide and fun park, shops, restaurants, and so much more. It was very busy, but we were able to jag a park pretty easily.
We had Grill’d burgers for lunch as all the restaurants were too full for a table of 7. As usual these were pretty tasty, and we sat around an chatted for ages. Lunch was completed with a trip to Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream, yum!
We departed at around 4pm on our way to visit my friend Mike and his family. I used to work with Mike years ago and it was great to catch up. Leanne & Gary dropped us off and went off to visit one of their relatives.
We sat with Mike and family by the pool chatting and having a selection of different beers, champagne and wine, all from WA. Everything was just beautiful. Mike made Nacho’s for an entree with black beans, which I now think are essential in a nachos as I had the same thing in San Fran recently and love them.
Dinner was a Twice Cooked Duck and Mushroom Paella. Not your traditional paella, however it worked superbly, and was just spectacular. Desert was a chocolate cheesecake that Mike also put together which was again, just sublime. Massive thanks for having us guys!
We took an Uber back to Fremantle and called it a night just after 11pm. All up it was a fantastic day around Perth.