Day 35

City Centre & Star City Casino

Monday 19 November

My favourite take away Chop Chop at the foodcourt in Pitt Street

Foodcourt

The foodcourt underneath the shopping area at Pitt Street

QVB

The Queen Victoria Building shopping mall

Woke up late, because I just wanted to sleep-in. Today I want to take it very easy. Need to catch up some sleep. Took a shower and started to put things into my box to send it home. Folded my shirts nicely and cramped as much as possible into the box. Fortunately I had bought the biggest box they have at the post office, otherwise many of my shirts wouldn't fit in.

12:30 PM. I left the hostel, checking my e-mails and took the bus to the city centre. Walked around inside the Queen Victoria Building for a while, before I went for lunch at the foodcourt. My favourite eating place is "Chop Chop", a Chinese take away with lots of dishes to choose from. Today's lunch was a dish of fried rice, beef in sauce and lamb in spicy sauce. Yummy! What a treat!

After the lovely meal, it was time to see more shops. Took pictures of the foodcourt and walked along. Visited a lot of music stores. The audio CD's are a lot cheaper than in Holland. Bought a CD and DVD from the Corrs. Went to the Market City to buy groceries and walked back to the hostel. The weather was really bad today, not much you can do on a day like this. Jaime asked me to shoot some pool. Better to do something than sitting around.

Jaime won the game with one first shot. He knocked the black ball straight into the pocket. Game over! Fortunately we didn't make a bet. We continued our game and used an improvised black ball. It looks so easy; just shoot the balls into the pockets. Yeah, right! It took some time, but I managed to win. I'm awful at pool. Jaime was pretty good. Yesterday Abhirup, Jaime and I, planned to visit the Star City Casino at 8:00 PM. So, enough time to check my e-mails. Surfed the internet and wrote some e-mails.

8:00 PM. the tree of us took a cab to the Star City Casino. Gambled a little bit, only at the Black Jack table. Also played Pontoon, which is similar to Black Jack. At the end I had won $ 5 AUD. I proudly showed one fish coin of $ 5 AUD to the girl cashier behind the counter. I had won! Five bucks! They smiled and gave me the money. I was happy and it seemed that they were happy too. A lucky winner! Enough money to buy a drink or two. At the bar we sat down, listened to the live performance and sipping our drinks.

Later on we walked to Darling Harbour, the city looks really great with all those lights. Too bad that I didn't bring my camera along to take pictures. We decided to eat at McDonalds or Maccers, as the Aussies call it, before heading home. It was almost midnight and we are enjoying our meal. Sydney really rocks! I wouldn't mind living here! After our meal we walked back to hostel. Time to get some sleep.