On the weekend, my family went to Port Macquarie, which is a few hours up north of Sydney. There were seven of us altogether: me, my mum, dad, Brandon, my cousin Ricky, his aunt (who has been visiting for a few weeks), and James. I was considering not going, just so everyone could fit in the car, but James said he wouldn’t mind coming so we had another car to fit everyone.

On Saturday morning James thought he had locked his keys in his car. We were wondering how that was actually possible, and how he would have locked the car. He thought he had left the keys in his jacket pocket and then thrown the jacket in the back of the car. Inside the house, we looked absolutely everywhere for the keys, but couldn’t find them. We retraced steps, looked under couches and on tables, but could not locate the keys. Eventually James’s mum dropped off his spare key.

In one car, there was my parents, aunt, and Ricky; James, Brandon and myself were in James’s car. Once we got to Port Macquarie it was already around lunchtime, so we took the time to eat, James and I browsed the local art gallery, then we went for a drive to go strawberry picking.

We led the way, since my dad seemed to get lost… I guess he wasn’t too good at navigating! They made a few wrong turns on the way. Picking strawberries didn’t take long, and it was pretty fun. I think James and I ended up picking over a kilo of strawberries. The rest of my family got a lot of bung strawberries – they picked them really fast as well, so we thought they didn’t really pick very carefully either.

That afternoon we went to Bago Vineyards, where they had a really cool garden maze. I don’t think I have been in a garden maze before, much less a maze (except this one level in Doom when I played it many years ago, hahahaha). It was a lot more difficult than we anticipated, especially getting through to the end because it required going under a bridge. Initially, we didn’t think that we needed to go under the bridge until Ricky and Brandon figured it out.

James and I tasted some wines. I think I have come to the conclusion (from not a lot of wine tasting) that I don’t mind sparkling wines, and I certainly prefer sweeter ones. I mean, I usually have my vodka with sweet things, so that makes a lot of sense.

We drove to the place we were staying; it was just a small bunch of apartments but fit enough to stay for a night. James, Brandon, Ricky and I stayed in one apartment and played Uno and Big 2 until we went for dinner at a little place called The Grill. We were waiting an extremely long time for our food. It took over an hour for it to arrive to us, and I was famished by the time my salmon arrived. It was cooked well, but I ate it way too fast. James and I had ordered mussels as an entree, and that arrived after our mains (hmm…). I liked it, but I think the spiciness made me feel ill, so we walked outside to get some fresh air and just waited for everyone else there.

The next morning I felt better, and we went to grab some food at the local mall. We drove down to the Koala Hospital and the Roto heritage house, which was a little more interesting to me than I initially thought. I usually just look at the items in historical houses, but here I took the time to read about a lot of the history.

We drove to the rainforest walk after that, and my parents bought a couple of plants. Brandon was complaining about the price and how he didn’t want to go inside and that it was a waste of $8. He and Ricky just wanted to go play putt-putt golf and go go-karting, but it was too far to drive and we didn’t really have enough time.

We went to a lighthouse to check out the views, and it was incredibly windy. I probably could have been blown off the cliff… haha, nah, that would be frightening. The beach was closed for swimming because of the winds. After that we started driving home. We followed my parents in the other car, although they seemed to go in a complete circle instead of taking the short way out.

It was a long drive home, and we took a few rest stops to use the toilet or to buy food. I think I probably had three coffees that day, purely for the taste value. I mean, iced coffee tastes pretty good. And I wasn’t drinking it to wake myself up, either.

Also, Brandon found James’s car key in our food basket amongst the bread and biscuits. We have no idea how it got there, but what we remember is that it wasn’t even fully packed on Saturday morning. The good thing is, we found the key… but it still seems very strange that James would have dropped it in there by accident, much less put it in there.

It was overall a good weekend. It was nice to get out of town and generally just forget about things. Granted, I would have just been coding or surfing the internet on the weekend, but I’m glad we travelled a little bit and spent some time together.