Idea: Learn to fly!
One of my birthday presents was learning to fly. There are quite a few different companies that you can do this with. You'll find that most of them go from Camden Airport, as it's little plane heaven. They go through a quick run through of the controls and such and then all of a sudden it's takeoff.
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| Going through low clouds |
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| More clouds |
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I have to say, that there's no other experience quite like flying a plane. Once the instructor hands the controls of the plane over, it's all you. Making sure that you're pumping on the pedals correctly as well as your "joystick," not pointing the nose of the plane up too high or heading for the ground is something that takes your brain a few minutes to work out. I got to do sharp turning of corners and took the plane in almost to land (the instructor took over at the last minute!
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| The ball is almost in the middle between left and right! |
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| Don't touch that! |
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| Sydney's water supply |
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| Coming in to land |
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| The plane |
I've done paragliding, parasailing, sky diving (all of which I also recommend), but learning to fly, or I guess, learning to do any of these that require skill, is something not to be missed. At it to your list to things to try! Afterwards, we were quite hungry, so that boy and I decided to drive a few minutes to the centre of Camden town. It's got a cute, small town vibe, with one main road down the middle. There were a few pubs and we decided on trying out the Argyle. Camden seemed like the right place to try a good proper Aussie pub lunch. The boy ordered the
Argyle beef burger, which had a succulent homemade patty of beef and all the works. It was tasty, it had lashings of rocket, tomato, beetroot and more and filled up the boy's stomach.
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| The argyle beef burger |
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I went with the
Thai Beef Salad and was pleasantly surprised. Often salads in these style of pubs are a sad mess of wilted greens with the odd tomato thrown in. Mine had a zingy Thai-style sauce, loads of fresh mint, crunchy fried noodles and perfectly medium-rare slices of beef on top. The greens were fresh and I ate every last scrap of this in my bowl.
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| Thai beef salad |
We had a good experience of a pub in a cute little town, still within Sydney. Best of all, the Argyle had air conditioning, as it was amazingly hot on Saturday! The pokey section of the pub, which you had to walk past to get to the bistro section smelt quite horrible, but once located in the bistro section, the smell disappeared. Yes, my view outside the window was of the carpark, but this pub was exactly what we ere in the mood for to fill our stomachs for a very late lunch. A day of flying, followed by a good lunch.
