A well deserved change of scenery and a wedding!

Where in Australia would you wear a sleeveless dress in June for a wedding by the sea?   The answer is “The Top End”, my friends – aka Darwin – where Mr Lucy and I spent the weekend, celebrating the wedding of my great mate Carolyn and her gorgeous fiance, Tony.    I have to establish here that Carolyn did not wear that particular outfit for her wedding day, there was a lot less tan and her dress was sensational.  Unfortunately all of my wedding pics are on Mr Lucy’s phone, so I’m waiting patiently for him to email them to me, so you’re just going to get the food and scenery pics.

We stayed at the Cullen Bay resort and every morning made our way down to the Boatshed Cafe and indulged in coffee, tea (as depicted above in a glass!) and breakfast.

I had the Boatshed Eggs – poached eggs, wilted spinach, asparagus on Turkish bread with pomegranate coulis…

Yum!

We spent some time exploring the city before settling down every afternoon at the Darwin Sailing Club with a cold drink and an amazing view…

 

Just happy to be doing nothing in particular and spending time with each other….

and occasionally looking up into the amazing coconut trees.

We met Carolyn and her family for dinner on Friday night at the Cullen Bay Marina and got busy with some drinks.

Being so hot, the environment really lends itself to having a cool drink – being allergic to alcohol, I had mineral water instead.  We met fellow blogger, Kerry and her Dad and shared a few beverages.

On Saturday morning, Carolyn and I participated in RPM at her local gym.  As the instructor was able to use PPCA music, I thoroughly enjoyed it – we got down and dirty to all of our favourites, including “Goin’ Insane” and “I Like To Move It”.   It was a lot of fun and Carolyn even wore a veil – the garter wasn’t such a great look with the bike pants, so we left that one alone.

Saturday evening was the wedding of course and it was a fantastic ceremony – Tony and his best men turned up on Harley Davidson motorcycles and we had an excellent evening of great food, great company and plenty of dancing.  Once I grab Mr Lucy’s photos, I will put a couple up on the blog.

On Sunday, we hired a car and travelled to the Litchfield National Park where we swam in the most amazing waterholes complete with waterfalls.   The road from Darwin to Alice Springs is long and flat and goes forever.  The soil gets redder the further away you are from Darwin  – definitely an iconic Aussie landscape.

Naturally we were well aware of swimming in the designated areas.  A bite from one of these fellows and I think you’d be a goner!

When we arrived back in Darwin, we visited the Mindil Beach Markets – which have a distinctly Indonesian/Balinese flavour in my opinion – lots of street stalls selling many varieties of Asian food – from Indonesian to Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Chinese and Indian.   We settled on a variety of Sri Lankan dishes and did what the locals do – eat on the beach and watch the sun set over the water. 

We also bought a CD from performing artist Didgera – check out the website to see and hear his amazing music and performance.

I picked up a selection of prints from local artist Katie Eagle.  The picture below is one of the prints that she features on her website.Bikes and contemplation about the vagaries of life – artistic perfection in my opinion!

Overall, I really enjoyed my time in Darwin – it really is a very relaxed, “you’ll be right, mate!” type of city and it definitely reminded me to enjoy slowing down and smelling the roses – or in this case, the coconuts and curries!

Have you ever been to Darwin?  What’s your favourite Australian city?

 

Tagged as: Darwin, Didgera, Kate Eagle, Litchfield, RPM at Fitness Bay