Today began with a great breakfast with Rick at an outdoor cafe in Mona Vale. It was a perfect day to sit outside and enjoy the weather with blue skies and temps in the upper 70s. Mona Vale is where Rick and his family live and is close to where Rick grew up. Mona Vale is a suburb of Sydney located about 17 miles north of downtown Sydney.
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It is a cool little “village” that has all kinds of shops and restaurants as well as personal services like doctors, barbers, banks and a supermarket. And perhaps best of all, “downtown” Mona Vale is about 500 yards from the ocean (more on that later). Here’s a wiki link with more information on Mona Vale if you’re interested: Mona Vale, NSW
After breakfast we came back and picked up his youngest daughter Natasha and went to buy shoes for school (the shop was closed on Thursday) and a new guitar! That was of course a lot of fun for me as I sat and played some high dollar Martin acoustics 🙂 as they worked with the sales clerk to pick out a good starter guitar. With a starter guitar in her hand and very expensive Martin’s in my head 🙂 we took her back to the house (she was anxious to play her new guitar) and headed to the beach!
As mentioned above it was about a 5 minute drive to the local beach (Mona Vale Beach & Basin Beach). This was my first experience with an Aussie beach and it did not disappoint. It was beautiful with the large sand beach area, big waves with white capped breakers and cliffs of ancient volcanic rock: Basin Beach
They also have a “Rockpool” (see below) at Basin Beach. Rick said these are very common around Australia. It’s basically a man made swimming pool built on rock at the edge of the ocean. It is filled by the ocean during high tide and provides a “pool” for people to swim without getting pounded by the waves in the ocean.
* For more pictures click the links under the “View Photos” on the right side of the page.
After some time at the beach we headed to the supermarket to pick up some things (yes Bill Reichard more food 🙂 and then back to the house where we relaxed on the deck with his wife Linda, had a drink and a great conversation.
As for the evening, Rick and Linda had dinner plans so Josh (Rick’s son), Natasha and I order Thai (yummy) and enjoyed our time talking about everything from the craziness of their cat (check out the video in yesterday’s blog) to the craziness of American politics. 🙂
So armed with the information provided above today’s “Where am I” should be cinch.
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