Day 7: Spoons and Darling Harbor

Everyone slept in a bit this morning in an attempt to recover from the night/day at Randwick on Saturday. The girls were off of school until Thursday, so when we were finished breakfast Celeste and I rolled up our sleeves to teach our host family a new game: spoons! Ah, the delights of spoons. I treasure fond memories of spoons tournaments at family reunions, sometimes resulting in dramatics injuries. Thankfully, our host family was less – may I say? – violent and no one was hurt. They were kind enough to compliment us on our excellent card-shuffling skills as well.

After the spoons game, we bid our “Australian family” farewell and Alma drove us to the train station with all our baggage. We took the train to Central Station, and hopped on a bus from there that would take us out to the Little Sisters of the Poor convent right next door (practically!) to Randwick Racecourse.

The residence/convent in Randwick was huge and they had about 240 pilgrims from France and Brazil staying there when we arrived. We deposited our things in a linen closet until the Sisters could find somewhere for us to sleep, and we followed Sister Julie (from Washington DC) to the kitchen where she promised to find us some lunch. One of the volunteers, a wonderful lady named Anita, gave us some food which we quickly ate before offering our assistance in serving the roughly one hundred hungry French pilgrims who had just come into the cafeteria.

An hour and a great deal of running around later, Celeste and I grabbed our little backpacks and caught the bus back to downtown Sydney to run some errands. Since our transport passes only extended through 7/21, the first thing on my list was to buy week-long combo tickets for unlimited bus, train, and ferry rides. Praise God, the woman at the ticket window was very patient and helped me choose the cheapest ticket option (which only cost $43) rather than the one I planned to buy which cost $180 per person. What a lifesaver!

While we were trying to decide what to do with the rest of our afternoon, Celeste snapping pictures of the Harbor and me wading through the dozens of maps and brochures I had collected, our cousins called. They had dropped their luggage off at the convent earlier in the morning, had by now finished their errands, and wanted to meet. We selected a meeting spot near the wharves and were soon a happy group of five (Steven was too tired and stayed back at the convent). Meanwhile, Rob called (three times for 30 seconds each!) and wanted to meet up with us as well. The Walkers wanted to do some souvenir shopping at the Hyde Park WYD tent, so I told Rob we would meet him there.

I snapped pictures of the fountain and was startled out of my wits by a curious policeman peering over my shoulder; Celeste continued to absentmindedly take pictures of everything around her; and the Walkers went shopping. Eventually, Rob met up with us – much to his dismay, he was the only guy with Steven out of action – and we decided that dinner would be an excellent idea. Off we went to Darling Harbor to find something to eat.

Without too much difficulty, we found a place on the Harbor with reasonably-priced meat pies (famous in Australia) and secured a table. The back-and-forth between five women and the one guy at the table was quite amusing, and Rob held his own stunningly. When we were finished we walked around Darling a bit until Anne remembered that she needed to buy hairpins. Rob groaned – he is constantly teasing about female shopping habits – and accompanied us to Woolworths to find the hairpins. Rob and I meandered about the store awhile, catching up on CUA news, and Rob tracked down some saline solution for our contact lenses since we had (ridiculously) forgotten to pack any. (Below: dinner at Darling Harbor!)

At this point Rob split off from the group and headed back to the hostel where he was staying, and the rest of us headed back to the convent. Our things had been moved the physical therapy room, where we all spent the night cozily on the floor with forty other girls from France and Spain. Ah the joys of being a WYD pilgrim!