4/22/14
Today we took a scenic ride along the Sunshine Coast to Noosa - one of the more popular vacation spots. It was another gorgeous day with abundant sunshine. There were many people extending their Easter/spring break vacations from Monday since ANZAC Day is this upcoming Friday and that way they could be on holiday for the entire week by only taking 3 days off.
We enjoyed lunch at one of the beach pizza parlors that was offering a large pizza + 2 drinks for $27, and we ended up getting 2 large pizzas, 2 Peroni beers and a Pimms. One of the pizzas was a Thai shrimp with lots of hot peppers. The other was 1/2 meat lovers and 1/2 main st. beach - avocado, chicken, bacon, zucchini. All were fantastic, and Graeme and I decided we needed another Peroni to help us wash down the last few pizzas.
We walked around Noosa and headed back to Coloundra, stopping at the brand new Aldi grocery store for corned beef, cabbage and other fixings for our dinner. We also popped into an adjacent liquor store to pick up some wine since grocery stores in Queensland are not allowed to carry any sort of alcohol. We picked up several bottles of Lindemann's Savignon Blanc, Shiraz and Merlot for us and our dear friend and fellow softball teammate, Cheryl, and her husband, who we will be visiting Thursday.
When we had finished loading our shopping cart with our wine and food, we descended to the parking garage on a sloped conveyor belt whose seams grabbed the front wheels of the cart so you wouldn't go head over heels behind your rapidly escalating runaway cart. Once the wheels grabbed it looked like they lost air and were only partially inflated so they would adhere better. I've never seen anything like it. Graeme saw intrigued I was so he allowed me to navigate our exit so I could see what it was like. (Sometimes it's the little things that make an impact in your memories).
Once you unloaded your cart, you returned it to the designated cart area in the garage. You pushed it into the cart ahead of it, took the little lock mechanism from the previous cart & connected your cart to it; pressed the coin mechanism (where you'd previously inserted either a coin or a key fob); and your $2 coin is returned. Reminded me of the luggage cart procedure in an airport terminal. All in all, pretty nifty. Maybe if we had this procedure we wouldn't have so many lazy people leaving their shopping carts sprawled all over the parking lot just waiting for the chance to dent or scratch your car.
The highlight of dinner tonight was a dessert I'd been dreaming of that was the bane of my existence when I lived here while teaching. Somehow I missed seeing the bakery on our last stop to a family owned produce store very similar to Detwiler's in Sarasota. (I must have really been slipping that I didn't even smell the bread and desserts). I guess Graeme got tired of hearing how much I missed lamingtons that he managed to sneak off and find some at the bakery for our dessert. Again, it is just another very fond remembrance - a simple sponge cake, rolled in melted chocolate then rolled again in coconut - but it just melts in your mouth when it's fresh. I would compare it to the Krispy Kreme donuts when the HOT sign comes on (and those of you who know me know that those are a major vice of mine). I used to buy a lamington loaf from the Clifton bakery and easily eat half of it before my flatmate returned home from school. Of course it didn't take long for me to pack on the pounds from that, the loaf of fresh bread that Zeita and I ate almost daily, and the litre of Coke to wash it all down! (ah, those were the days)!
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