All About Lenora

First Nick came.  Then John.  And then… drumroll please…

LENORA!

Lenora was my third formal visitor from the United States.  As if I don’t feel old enough, Lenora has been my friend since freshman year of high school.  That means we were 14.  Now we’re 28.  So Lenora has been my friend for half of my life.  I’m getting too old too fast.  Frightening.

Lenora is a rugby enthusiast (the only one in America?) so she hopped down to New Zealand for a few days for the Rugby World Cup.  And since New Zealand is relatively close to Australia, it was only appropriate she pop in for a few days before heading back to North America.  And by “only appropriate”, I mean I would have taken her for a guilt trip like none other had she not.

But she did.  Because she’s Lenora.

Anyway, her brief time in Oz was spent playing condo rummy a few times a day (oh yes, going back to the high school years of card games), scrolling through Facebook mocking nearly everyone else that we went to high school with, correcting her name (Aussies had a hard time with Lenora… no, it’s not Lenore… and no it’s not Loretta… ???), planning our next trip out, planning our retirements, partaking in a trivia night, watching some rugby on TV, and fitting in a few touristy things in between.  As with all my guests, I took Lenora on the Bondi – Coogee Coastal Walk and on the ferry up to Manly, and I gave her an itinerary of the major tourist things to do while I was at work (like the Taronga Zoo, the Botanical Gardens, and the Sydney Opera House).  I even got to squeeze in a new thing that even I hadn’t done before – heading up to level 47 of Australia Square to check out to the 360-degree, rotating view of the city:

Oh yes, and I fed Lenora too (because I would have been a horrible host had I not allowed her to eat for five days…)  As she was in Australia, she needed to have kangaroo.  So we got her a kangaroo pizza at the Australian Hotel in The Rocks:

And there was ice cream.  We went to WowCow for frozen yogurt, Messina for gelato, and Movenpick for ice cream… twice.  And then we bought a container for home one night too, which we finished off the next day.  So we had ice cream or ice cream-related desserts six times in five days.

We’re awesome.

Despite the short timeframe, I think Lenora’s visit was a successful one.  And since she only saw Sydney, well, she’ll just have to come back at some point to see a bit more.  Woohoo!

Waiting in line for the Manly ferry:

At Manly:

Self-portrait: