Princesses!

Despite my increasingly hectic workload I have been super-excited this last week because I was reunited with two very special ladies, Jana and Noreen. I lived with them in a lovely big house in Stoke Newington back in my London days, and as the house was in Princess May Road we nicknamed ourselves the princesses. They were visiting Sydney as one leg of a travelling extravaganza which also took in Mongolia and Beijing. The lovely fourth princess Taey was still in London (now hanging out in New York) so we were only three, but after a year and a half it was so wonderful to be together again, and for me to show them round my neighbourhood and introduce them to my life here in Sydney.

Reunited!

As well as my funky Bondi hospitality, with barbecues, clifftop walks and body surfing in Bronte, we ventured together to Western Sydney, to visit some of Noreen's extended family and sample some traditional Hazara food. It was lovely to see Noreen's mum again, and her cousins were dead cute. Check out some pics on flickr of our trip.

With Jana on Bronte beach

Dinner with Noreen's family

I also managed to take the girls to some of my favourite breakfast places in Bondi. They sampled the delicious breakfast crumble at Gertrude and Alice's bookshop cafe, and we managed to get a couple of trips in to Jed's in North Bondi: the Caribbean-influenced cafe with the best coffee in town.

Noreen tucks into breakfast in Jed's

Jana has now gone home to London :o( but Noreen is about for a while longer, visiting a few other places but hopefully staying here again for a few days before she goes home. I need to make sure she cooks me her legendary lentil curry while she is here. It's one of the things I miss the most about my life in the UK. Especially when things are busy in the run up to the film festival, I wistfully reminisce about the times when I used to come home to a stove full of lentil curry and rejoice in my exhaustion and hunger that I didn't need to cook for myself!

Hanging out with Noreen at Matt's house

Siobhan and Sammie also stopped by recently on their way up the East coast. They are now in Byron Bay and I will see Siobhan again before she goes off to New Zealand for the next leg of her adventure.

Dinner in North Bondi Italian

I'll keep it brief as I need my sleep and have work to do. Also Christina and I have spent the evening baking cakes as we are hosting a cupcake stall at a Vintage Fair tomorrow in Randwick Town Hall. Crazy, I know, but it should be lots of fun.

Princesses

cx