Saturday June 15th: Day 2
We started our morning as we usually do, with an early morning walk followed by coffee. This involved heading back down the 200 step path towards Hastings Street and on towards the beach and boardwalk that hugs the coastline around the peninsula.
It was another beautiful day and we even spotted a koala along our walk. Mark’s ‘Boiling Pot’ beer came back into focus again as we found an area on the path was obviously the inspiration for this beverage. One other thing that gradually dawned on all of us is that the real estate in the area where we are staying is quite remarkable. Remarkable in that all of the properties seem relatively new. It’s all a bit surreal really; it’s like a manufactured movie set where nothing old has survived. We googled our apartment address and saw that this 3 bedroom / 3 bathroom apartment had sold halfway through last year for $3 million! We spent some time over morning coffee checking out other real estate and found that you can get a two bedroom apartment, with similar views to what our apartment has and in a similar elevated area, for around $1 million. Bargain!
Our morning coffee stop was at Le Monde cafe where the staff were rude but the coffee was okay. Then, it was back up those 200 steps to get ready for the day. The plan for the day was to visit Eumundi markets in the morning and then the girls have a massage booked for the afternoon; all followed by a home cooked BBQ fish dinner at our apartment.
It was a 25 minute drive to Eumundi markets and our first challenge was to find a park. This ended up being sorted rather easily but the next challenge was working out how to attack the markets; it’s a huge and sprawling affair being a maze of crisscrossing pathways. For the OCD types like myself there was a sense of unease from not knowing where to head to next or just how much of the markets we had missed out on seeing in the time we spent there. The markets are open from 7-2 pm on a Saturday and Wednesday so maybe we will come back to explore further during the week. With hindsight, I realised that I should have googled a map of the markets to assess their scope and I did so once I got home (see photos). We spent our time wandering the paths, checking out the stall offerings and and sampling some food before Mark sniffed out the Eumundi Brewery where he headed to sample the local beer.
It was 12.30 before we left Eumundi with a couple of stops on the way home; to buy some fish for dinner and a drink bottle for Marks bike riding. The stop to buys fish proved a little challenging as some designated fish markets failed to materialise as suggested by Google maps. This proved to be quite fortuitous though as, in our search for other fish markets, Mark found a supplier of the Boiling Pot beer he had so enjoyed the previous night. We arrived home in time for the girls to walk down to their 3 pm massage but Mark and I remained home enjoying the lovely afternoon sun that streams into the apartment and the view.
I just want to note a bit more about the kitchen in our apartment. For those other AirBnB folk out there you’d know what a lottery it is whether the place you rent is well set up for visitors or not. This place is the best set up AirBnB apartment that we have ever stayed in! There are loads of coffee cups and wine glasses of all sizes, there are two complete cutlery settings, loads of different size salad / serving bowls and cooking pans and multiple drawers full of a wide array of cooking utensils. Check out the photos! This is certainly a great place for a family or group of friends to stay and enjoy.
All of this made it very comfortable when preparing and BBQing our fish and prawn dinner; a meal we enjoyed on the balcony watching another magnificent sunset.
