We spent the night at the ritsy Hotel Esplanade in Fremantle, WA. Last night, Chris and I went out to a nice Indian restaurant for a late dinner. I tried something called a Mango Lassi with mango, yogurt, milk and a splash of rose water. It was delicious.
After dinner, we walked to the Anchor Sail Brewery, where Chris tried a couple beers. He liked the house IPA and the Pilsner. I had water with lemon. It was an interesting atmosphere. We sat up on the open air balcony on fancy cushions. There weren’t any waitstaff coming around pestering us-if you wanted to order a drink, you just went up to the bar yourself. Kind of a low-key place to just hang out and do your own thing. A free salsa lesson had just ended, so there were people practicing their footwork in a few of the rooms.
This morning, Chris & I started our day having breakfast at Hungry Jacks, a master franchise of Burger King with over 300 restaurants in Australia. Then we had the rest of the morning to explore, so we meandered through the park and down to the beach, then walked downtown to explore the shops. I tried on a couple designer pants, just for fun. Then I ordered an orange, carrot and ginger juice and it was my turn to follow Chris around for an hour. It started to rain, so we went in a large market building with all kinds of fresh produce, art and other things for sale. We listened to a guy playing a metallic guitar with a slider on his thumb and using a kick thing to hit his guitar case and make a drum beat-he was good and it was an unusual sound.
We went into a new age shop and I bought a candle that smells like a chocolate tootsie roll pop. I wanted to buy a book but didn’t want to add anymore weight to my luggage and thought I’d try to find it online, only now, of course, I can’t remember the name.
My Mom had a semi humorous experience at the post office. She was mailing a box and the lady asked if she wanted stamps, Mom said, “that’s ok” thinking she was asking if she needed to buy stamps-so the lady set about individually sticking dozens upon dozens of stamps all over the box to make up the correct postage, then re-added them all up with the calculator afterwards to make sure it was just the right amount. Mom was getting ready to pay and commented how in the United States they can just print out a stamp with the exact amount-instead of having to cover the whole box with stamps—”Oh, I can do that,” the lady said. Mom just stared at her stunned…we’d all been out in the RV waiting for her and time was of the essence to get the RV returned on time. We think that when the lady asked if she wanted stamps and Mom said “that’s alright”-she took that as affirmative-as in “yes, alright, I’ll have stamps all over my package.” The accent and way questions are phrased can be challenging to understand the true meaning sometimes.
We’re in a rush to get to our hotel now, which is near the airport, so we can drop off all our stuff and return the RV on time.
