Sydney Shop Girl

The Getaway Weekend. Dinosaur Valley.

This is the smile of a person who got off work early on Friday ahead of a weekend getaway.
And this was the state of affairs in the cold drink fridge at Woolies on that same Friday when it was around 28C by lunchtime and 30C for most of the afternoon…  Five Coke No Sugars in a sea of Other Soft Drinks.
Master SSG and I went to Leura with three other families over the weekend and from a parent’s perspective, it went almost miraculously well.   Everyone enjoyed themselves, there were no injuries and the only minor annoyance of the weekend was the rain on Friday night.  But even that pelted down after we’d safely made the drive from Sydney.

This was our Air B’n’B for the weekend and this photo makes it look deceptively small. 

The most popular room with the boys… before it got buried under cushions and stuffed toys….

The house had enough bedrooms and bathrooms for us all over three compact levels.  The back decks looked out over the mountains and the boys could have happily spent the entire weekend playing in the house.  Soft furnishings were fashioned into forts, stairs were climbed on bottoms and endless games of zombie took place in between.

As for me?  I spent quite a bit of time sitting in the reading room with my latest YA romance find and a mug of instant coffee.
I’m currently reading ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ trilogy by Jenny Han.
Image result for the year i turned pretty
via The Guardian
It’s a bit darker than ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before’ and I like that.  Belly, the heroine of ‘The Summer’ is torn between the brothers Conrad and Jeremiah.  She loves them both as brothers and then romantically. It gets awfully complicated and her feelings play out against the complex landscapes of the lives of her and the boys’ parents.

This is the bookcase wall opposite the pair of chairs in the reading room where I sat each morning of our weekend in Leura.

I couldn’t think of a more perfect place to curl up with a good book.

I drank a lot of fancy instant coffees over the weekend. This is a Moccona Maple Pecan Crave which you make up and then top with a few chocolate leaves. It was okay. it had a pleasant maple flavour but it could have gone a bit stronger with the coffee.

Image result for moccona coffee maple
via Google impages
This is how they look at the shops.
This was our kitchen and just like home, it was the heart of our stay and where we would congregate for meals and chats.  You have no idea just how much food and drink we packed into this kitchen. It ended up being a good thing because dinner at the house was much less stressful than trying to go out with our gaggle of boisterous boys.

Of course there was champagne.

With chips because it’s important to stay classy always.

Peer pressure saw the boys all eat their meat, vegetables, bread and fruit.

The main event for our party was Dinosaur Valley at Scenic World.  The exhibition opened this month and will be on until the end of January next year.  

Dinosaur Valley is a presentation of robotic dinosaurs set up in a section of the rainforest at Scenic World.

We picked a pretty perfect Saturday for our visit and we also picked opening time which was very wise because it got very busy around lunchtime.  It was so cool and shady in the valley as we walked amongst the likenesses of our prehistoric ancestors.

There were plenty of places to explore as we took our walk through the forest.

We found eggs that rattled and glowed in the shade.

The nursing / delivery trolley set up next to the hatching egg made me smile.
The boys thoroughly enjoyed the walk and were at the right age to be fascinated rather than bored or scared by the dinosaurs.

There were little suprises everywhere we looked.

We bought each boy an explorer pack, if you buy them online you get a $5 discount bringing them to $20 each.
Inside the satchel was a water bottle, cardboard binoculars and activities to keep the boys occupied.

Needless to say drinks and themed lunches were the order of the day when we ended our visit with lunch at the Scenic World cafe.

 We changed pace with out next stop at Blackheath.

There was a beautiful park which was hosting an annual fair and it was packed with families enjoying the good weather.  Our first stop was the bouncy castle.

And then the ice cream van.  I get nostalgic every time I see those vans.  The treats they serve have stood the test of time.

Master SSG picked a fabric owl to add to this collection of school bag charms and he also got to explore the police van which was part of the fair.

Back at the ranch, it was early showers and dinner for the boys before the parents settled in for the night with this pretty impressive cheeseboard.

We started Sunday with brunch and a walk through the Leura shopping area before  beginning the drive home.

The most popular shop was definitely The Candy Store, a tidy little shop that is wall to wall treats from all corners of the world.

These look familiar.  They’re my favourite chocolate coated marzipan treats from Germany.

Nostalgia hit again when I saw these Double Dip sherberts. 

It’s kind of okay to be politically incorrect if there’s chocoalte involved, right?  There were candy Fags somewhere on the shelf too…

Our final stop was Leura Falls.

 I thought this branch angled across the falls was just beautiful.

The weekend ended far too quickly and the boys are under the impression that we’re all going again this coming weekend.  I wish we were.

I love playing tourist in my own backyard.  How about you?

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