Aroma festival

Aussies drink coffee and tea all the time. The tea comes from the British tradition, but the coffee drinking is more international phenomenon. Coffee shops are basically everywhere. Besides various brand stores like Starbucks, you can find here heaps of individual owners. As we were told - when you want to make money, open a coffee shop....

Quite a long time ago (sorry for the delay) we visited Aroma Festival of Tea and Coffee in the Rocks (the oldest part of Sydney). As the welcome poster indicated (three out of 6 sponsors were coffee companies), it was far more about coffee than tea.

The Festival was mainly in the streets, where coffee companies were showing their coffee art. First fact we realized after our arrival was that there were looooong queues everywhere. Coffee was very cheap - for 1 $ and so everybody wanted to taste everything.

Second thing we discovered was that you could even move in the streets because of the crowd waiting in front of every stand.

The Rocks district is situated close to the Harbour bridge.

We went there with our friends Kay, Amy, Darja (in the picture) and Mariana (taking it)Kay and Amy enjoying coffee.

Mariana (btw from Slovakia) expresses our impressions from the festival.

So we decided to leave the festival quite early and started to search a pub (Ondra was the leader of this operation).
However, it was still early and everything was closed, so we ended in The Lindt chocolate store.

Cronulla and Stanwell Park

We skipped school (recent time it´s been very boring) and undertook a journey to the South of Sydney with our loyal guide Denis. First stop was at Botany Bay. Even though, it sounds like a romantic place, it is actually a bay, where is oil refinery, Sydney's airport (on an artificial peninsula) and a big industrial port. But people don't care and houses are here expensive like elsewhere in Sydney.

Nice view over Botany Bay and in the distance you can see Sydney City and Port Botany.
Shell searching...
Further to the South there is a much nicer place called Cronulla where Ondra decided to swim (for the first time in Australia). The air temperature was acceptable, 18 degrees :)

We wont be lying, Ondra was in the water just a short time and Lucie took a few picture of him (that was the main reason why we did it)..... but what´s happened .... all photos were white like the one below....and Ondra was freezing....

....nevertheless he didn't give it up and dived into the waves once more!
Drying was very quick because of very cold wind.

This is already few kilometers to the South and the place is called Stanwell Park. A good spot for view and hang-gliding as well.... It was also an experimental place of Australian aviation pioneers. The trick is to land on the small beach, which was not always easy...
Denis explains us many things.
Somewhere far away there should be the Wollongong (some people regard it still as Sydney suburb, although it´s over 100 km from the downtown).
Ondra and a beautiful landscape
Again one more Denis's remark...
These stylish ice-cream cars are everywhere. Since it was already cold closer to the evening, we preferred a cup of hot chocolate.
The picture supposed to be only as a reminder of the name of that place, but it´s nice, isn't it?

The Royal National Park was our last stop on the way back. It is a vast land, where you can walk without meeting anyone (just 40 min from Sydney). The valley on the picture is a good fishing spot, but you must be careful, as there is sometimes a few more meters of water on the place where we stood.

The amazing sunset is the last photo of that day.

A Beautiful Day at the Bondi Beach

A few pictures from Bondi Beach. It was after couple cold days finally nice day.

The ocean is awesome and even in winter full of surfers.
People in Australia are very active ... they do surfing....
.... jogging along the beach ....
.... and some of them are looking for a lost war-gold (probably).

We only walked on the beach, however the ocean can surprise you...

... or lets say us...

But we survived!!

Party time!

Finally after two weeks we visited a party with SELC students...
.... organised by Kay from Korea ....
... on the occasion of Daria´s birthday (as she was sixteen, the Corona beer is hidden behind her back :-)We all study English here, however some of us have really interesting occupation at home..... Tomomi (on the right) is for example a DNA researcher.
Drinking for friendship with Lyn from Korea
It' s a Sushi tasting time!!!

Lucie and Kay - our host, which was after the party almost expelled from the flat by the owner because we were a bit loud or so...A different place, but the party is still going on!!!
This is really the last photo .... btw who is the drunken guy in the picture?

School, work and etc.

This is a building of our school SELC (Sydney English Language Centre). The location in the Bondi Junction is amazing, just 20 min by walk form our unit and another 15 min by train to the centre. You can see the ocean from the classes! (Although it looks like sentence from promotion brochure, it' s true :-) )


Our Advanced class (not whole) on a trip. Don't think we are all the time on trips..... however it, very often. In the middle of this picture there is our teacher Shaun.

Another picture from our walk from Rose Bay to Watsons Bay.


And one more.

Last day of our first term at school...

Couple of students from our class...

Ondra late in the night.


Lucie in her job - Caffeterie & Boulangerie LAURENT.....Where is she? If you are able to point her, you win a beer/wine.... the only condition applied is that you must consume it here down under.



And now according to one of the authors, one important topic - beer offer in Australia. Beer in a supermarket is expensive (about 3 $ for 375 ml), the most expensive beers are suprisingly from Czech Republic, almost 4 $ per bottle. In the lower shelf is Staropramen in an old package-design, the beer must be over expiration date!!!