After a suggestion by Jan-Ulrich that a walk to Bondi Beach this morning could be happening today, I narrowly missed him at 10.30am at the hostel's reception and then didn't leave the hostel until about 11.20am. A bank transfer I'd expected to clear today hadn't so a very cheap day was required, which is what I managed.
At Thaipower I had a chicken pad thai, which was as delicious as always, then walked down Victoria Street, down the McElhone Steps and found a spot in the southern part of The Domain to try and top up my suntan - which since Fiji had almost vanished - whilst reading a national paper I'd bought.
Not wanting to singe myself to a crisp, at 12.30pm I made the short walk to the Art Gallery of New South Wales and was there until 3pm looking through the galleries. The works of art displayed here were, in my eyes, "proper art" (i.e. paintings and the like dating back sometimes several hundreds of years) compared to that which I've seen in Contemporary and Modern art galleries over the course of my travels. There were many works that warranted a "more detailed" study than just a brief glance. These included Adouard Detaille's Vive L'Empereur 1891, Alphonse de Neuville's The Defense of Rorke's Drift 1880 (picturing an incident on 22 January 1879 when about 80 British troops successfully fought off repeated attacks by an army of around 4,000Zulu warriors during the Zulu War), John Glover's Classical Landscape 1820 and HJ Johnstone's A billabong of the Goulburn, Victoria 1884.
Another unusual piece in the gallery was a sculpture by James Angus entitled Bugatti Type 35 2006, where the artist has taken the aforementioned car, replicated it and then distorted it through a gravitational shift 30 degrees to the right. The result is quite astounding.
Leaving the gallery at 3pm I wandered through The Domain looking for a nice spot (preferably shaded!) to sit down, relax and finish reading the paper before doing some research in to my upcoming travels. However I noticed a blond girl sitting on her own slightly off the beaten track and so went over and introduced myself. The girl was a Swede called Jenny who seemed to be ever so nice and we chatted for a long time about all sorts of things before walking back to Kings Cross for about 6pm at which point we parted company. It was a lovely way to spend time in the late afternoon sun; with a new friend - whom before today I didn't even know existed.
On the way back to the hostel, I picked up a creamy cheese baked potato and then watched three Simpsons, a Family Guy and a Futurama episode before Goodfellas was put on the DVD player. As this is one of my favourite films and given my lack of accessible funds to go out with, I could hardly not watch it and so I did so and relaxing on one of the many bean bags in the tv room.
I saw Jan-Ulrich come in after his day and chatted to him later on in the evening. After writing up my journal for a fair while, it turned 1am and I made to head upstairs to bed, stopping at reception on the way to book the room for a further two nights. The staff member who'd been there the night before when I'd complained about the noise and smoking coming from the dorm room above mine at 2.30am to 3.30am (when I eventually got to sleep!) suggested that he could move me to a quieter room on the third floor, which I happily agreed to. So after moving everything up one floor and a brief foray on Facebook on one of the hostel's computers I eventually got to bed at 3am.
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