Yee haw. Another great night last night. We met up with Gavin on Campbell St. around 6:00pm and had a couple schooners before heading over to the korean B.B.Q.. We got the set meal for four but it was way too much food! We ended up leaving most of the seafood hot pot. We decided to stay fairly close to the Westend since it was Gavin's last night and he had to leave early early. 
We went to this bar on George St. that caught our eye everytime we walked up that way - 3 Wise Monkeys.(http://www.3wisemonkeys.com.au/). Met a bunch of guys who were on a stag night for their buddy Gav. Partied with them for a bit - they didn't want to leave we were having such a good time but they had to carry on with their stag night - something about strippers. Through feats of strength (way to go Forklift) we met some coal miners from Mudgee. Very fun and funny. One of them looks like Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray. I have to tell you that all of the guys we
met were terrified of Gavin
when we brought them over to meet him (until he put on gav's orange statetrooper sunglasses). There aren't many guys his size out here! They wanted to know if he was our "minder". Another couple of people we met - Clair and her friend (Ummm. can't remember but maybe Scott??). Great 3 level bar with a live band on the top floor playing the requisite '80s rock! We ripped it up on the dance floor for a long time but there are a bunch of guys here who rush you from behind and grab your ass. It was exactly the same as when we go to El Convento Rico at home
so I just used my elbows to shove them off. I don't know if it's Sydney or just this bar but the ratio of men to women was 3 to 1 - the polar opposite of Toronto! That, coupled with our "exotic" accents, made for lots of attention. I think I only paid for one beer all night.
I'm just waiting for the girls to come downstairs and then we're off to the league final at Telstra Stadium! 90,000 seats sold out - crazy or what?! We got our tickets from the produce guys we met at the Orient Hotel. There's a bit of a problem because when we picked up our tickets we were rushing back from Bondi to pack up our bags etc because we have to leave for the airport around 7:00am. When we tore off our three tickets, one of the barcodes was left on Geoff's ticket. However, I called David and it's all cool. They're at the stadium already so two girls will go in, get the bar code and bring it back down to me. Hope there's no problem at the gate!
Okay, so when we got to the gate, we were worried about the ticket thing but as soon as we started to explain that we couldn't scan the bar code on one, the ticket taker said, "You must be the Canadian girls - the gentlemen arranged everything - go ahead." Whew!
Marisha had bought all kinds of purple fan stuff for the game and she was wearing the Dr. Seuss Canada hat. The guys were happy to see us - we were about 20 minutes late. At the half we went to get beer and, of course, attracted a lot of attention (marisha and I were wearing our team Canada jackets). The gentleman in the beer line ahead of us introduced himself as Peter Wynn.
I said, "hey, I was in your sports store in Parramatta last week. you're the rugby guy!" He showed us his photo in the game program - him playing back in the 80s and invited us to the Melbourne Storm's after party at the Albion. too bad he forgot to give us wristbands - we weren't able to get in once we arrived and security wouldn't go find him for us. Julie had arranged to meet Callum, the guy from the bar the night before at half time so we just hung around for a bit. he didn't show but we met a lot of people. A guy wearing a hockey night in Canada t-shirt came over. he ahd moved to Australia from calgary and just wanted to say hi to people from home. We got back to the second half late. Our hosts weren't too pleased when Julie spent 20 minutes yelling into the phone, standing and waving, trying to tell Callum where we were but we finally convinced her to go find him on the 100 level and things calmed down.
The game was so fast and so much fun and coincidentally we were cheering for the right team! The Melbourne Storm won it.
Wow, the Aussies really do things right. Not only is transit to and from the game free with your ticket, when we left the stadium we went straight into a huge area with a stage - after-party times ten! Live band, cheap beer and a party that killed. We met so many people and I gave out my remaining Canada pins which prompted people to buy us drinks since they "had to give us something in return". We were partying with some really fun guys. One of them was the Austral-Asian Marble World Champion - Mark Macdonald who works for Macdonalds and we met another woman, Leanne, who coached the bronze medallists from outrigger worlds. I gave her my email address and said she should come to Toronto for the 'round the island since it's their off-season.
I can't wait for Marisha to upload her photos when we get home!
We went to this bar on George St. that caught our eye everytime we walked up that way - 3 Wise Monkeys.(http://www.3wisemonkeys.com.au/). Met a bunch of guys who were on a stag night for their buddy Gav. Partied with them for a bit - they didn't want to leave we were having such a good time but they had to carry on with their stag night - something about strippers. Through feats of strength (way to go Forklift) we met some coal miners from Mudgee. Very fun and funny. One of them looks like Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray. I have to tell you that all of the guys we
met were terrified of Gavin
when we brought them over to meet him (until he put on gav's orange statetrooper sunglasses). There aren't many guys his size out here! They wanted to know if he was our "minder". Another couple of people we met - Clair and her friend (Ummm. can't remember but maybe Scott??). Great 3 level bar with a live band on the top floor playing the requisite '80s rock! We ripped it up on the dance floor for a long time but there are a bunch of guys here who rush you from behind and grab your ass. It was exactly the same as when we go to El Convento Rico at home
so I just used my elbows to shove them off. I don't know if it's Sydney or just this bar but the ratio of men to women was 3 to 1 - the polar opposite of Toronto! That, coupled with our "exotic" accents, made for lots of attention. I think I only paid for one beer all night.
I'm just waiting for the girls to come downstairs and then we're off to the league final at Telstra Stadium! 90,000 seats sold out - crazy or what?! We got our tickets from the produce guys we met at the Orient Hotel. There's a bit of a problem because when we picked up our tickets we were rushing back from Bondi to pack up our bags etc because we have to leave for the airport around 7:00am. When we tore off our three tickets, one of the barcodes was left on Geoff's ticket. However, I called David and it's all cool. They're at the stadium already so two girls will go in, get the bar code and bring it back down to me. Hope there's no problem at the gate!
Okay, so when we got to the gate, we were worried about the ticket thing but as soon as we started to explain that we couldn't scan the bar code on one, the ticket taker said, "You must be the Canadian girls - the gentlemen arranged everything - go ahead." Whew!
Marisha had bought all kinds of purple fan stuff for the game and she was wearing the Dr. Seuss Canada hat. The guys were happy to see us - we were about 20 minutes late. At the half we went to get beer and, of course, attracted a lot of attention (marisha and I were wearing our team Canada jackets). The gentleman in the beer line ahead of us introduced himself as Peter Wynn.
I said, "hey, I was in your sports store in Parramatta last week. you're the rugby guy!" He showed us his photo in the game program - him playing back in the 80s and invited us to the Melbourne Storm's after party at the Albion. too bad he forgot to give us wristbands - we weren't able to get in once we arrived and security wouldn't go find him for us. Julie had arranged to meet Callum, the guy from the bar the night before at half time so we just hung around for a bit. he didn't show but we met a lot of people. A guy wearing a hockey night in Canada t-shirt came over. he ahd moved to Australia from calgary and just wanted to say hi to people from home. We got back to the second half late. Our hosts weren't too pleased when Julie spent 20 minutes yelling into the phone, standing and waving, trying to tell Callum where we were but we finally convinced her to go find him on the 100 level and things calmed down.
The game was so fast and so much fun and coincidentally we were cheering for the right team! The Melbourne Storm won it.
Wow, the Aussies really do things right. Not only is transit to and from the game free with your ticket, when we left the stadium we went straight into a huge area with a stage - after-party times ten! Live band, cheap beer and a party that killed. We met so many people and I gave out my remaining Canada pins which prompted people to buy us drinks since they "had to give us something in return". We were partying with some really fun guys. One of them was the Austral-Asian Marble World Champion - Mark Macdonald who works for Macdonalds and we met another woman, Leanne, who coached the bronze medallists from outrigger worlds. I gave her my email address and said she should come to Toronto for the 'round the island since it's their off-season.
I can't wait for Marisha to upload her photos when we get home!
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