Day 70: On the beach with old mates

Saturday 13th February 

Going to Coogee Bay with mates from my university days

Distance: Bus, 4km

Total Distance: 10573km

I've been staying with Chris, an old flatmate I lived with at uni in Edinburgh. Here's been here for just over a year doing an internship. One of our other friends from uni, Cannon, is from Sydney but now lives in the UK. However this weekend he was visiting so we organised to spend a day catching up on the beach.

We met up by Coogee Beach- near to where a lot of the British in Sydney live. It was another hot day so Chris decided to go by us a beach umbrella. At the store the young spaniard informed him "no refunds, no returns". This did confuse us for a while, but it would entertain us all day. 

We went down to the beach for a few hours to catch up and chat about life after uni, as well as tell the same old time honoured jokes. It was great to have a catch up- we haven't seen much of any of our uni mates since graduation. Thus we also got into ideas for when we're all back to reunite the flat for a weekend. (A heads up if you're reading guys!)

All this time the wind picked up and died. Picked up, died. Picked up, died. Then picked up and took the umbrella with it! I ran down the beach proclaiming "sorry, sorry, sorry!!!" to everyone it hit as it tumbled across the sand. Eventually it settled on a man who'd just been struck in the face by it. I apologised then ran away before he could complain. Two to the struts inside were bent, but it still worked. We had problems with it for the rest of the day too, but tied it down with bags enough to not be so embarrassed again.

The rest of the afternoon we alternated between swimming and chatting, went to the local Mexican restaurant, and found some of Cannon's local friends who we ate dinner with. Later, as the sun began to set, Chris got a volleyball and we practiced on the slowly cooling beach. We're not very good. After a few apologies as the ball flew off towards people and needing time to get home we eventually said good bye. It'll be at least another 6 months before we might see each other again. But today was a lovely day.