We all had a good run, while Chris did the grocery shopping, and then we went to try out "Fremantle's best Indian restaurant", called Maya. Since it's the only Indian restaurant we have tried, in Fremantle or Perth, we couldn't scientifically test the guidebook's review, but it was certainly very good. Rio tried the lamb rogan josh, which was a little bit spicy for his taste but he enjoyed the meatiness of it. Sol had butter chicken, despite noticing that it had "little cream" listed as an ingredient, and also enjoyed that. Chris and I shared a palak paneer dish which was bright green and very tasty, as well as an eggplant/capsicum curry.
We wandered a bit in the trendy shopping district of Fremantle, and the boys had a good browse in a souvenir shop while I found a great bulk health food store and stocked up on some of the weird and wonderful ingredients that I have been missing.
After that we headed over to the docks and discovered that we had timed our visit magnificently to coincide with Maritime Day. There was a lot going on in various parts of the docks, but we wanted to visit the Maritime Museum so that was our focus for the afternoon. We explored the boat displays from down the ages, hanging at all levels in the sailboat-shaped museum. Then we did a special tour of the submarine - it's claustrophobic enough that they only take 10 people in at a time, and the tour is very in-depth and informative, taking a full hour to get in and around it.
My level of maturity was revealed when I discovered that my favourite part of the tour was learning the Stop Snorting Routine - though I have to say that it is surprisingly difficult to stop snorting when you are instructed to do so.
Sunday was Father's Day, which gave us a chance to make up to Chris the underwhelming father's day he had back in June when we were in Skagit. Although we did start the day in a similar way, with the morning spent watching two soccer matches. We had Rio's penultimate soccer match and Sol's final match. Rio played at home and Sol was away at Gosnells. Rio had to take his turn in goal for the first half of the match, and was kept quite busy with shots because the other team liked to leave one or two people lurking near goal while our defenders liked to play up in the attacking zone. He also used his hands outside the crease (it's a very small crease area) so he had to defend against a blistering free kick from very close range. His reactions were sharp, though, so they ended the half 0-0. In the second half, the other team got 3 cheap goals from poor goal kicks by the inexperienced goalie, but Rio had some satisfaction of scoring from a centrekick with a surprising run down the middle, a shot that hit the post and then a goal on the follow up.
Unfortunately for Sol, Rio's game made him late for his own match warm up, and by the time he turned up, they had a full roster of 15 players (they are not allowed to field more than 14 for any match and they aren't organised enough to figure it out in advance). So, he had to just watch and cheer for his final game of the season. Disappointing, but good that he had enough team spirit to stay under those circumstances. Now that his practices are done, he has decided to keep his skills and fitness up by getting up early to go for runs, and by training on his own in the yard or at the park nearby.
My father's day treat to Chris was to take him for 9 holes of golf at our nearby Wembley golf course, while the boys went to their first CISV Perth event. The CISV event was pretty small and mellow, but it was good for Rio to get the opportunity to try it out - and because it meant that Chris and I could go golfing on our own. Not that we wouldn't have wanted to have the kids golf with us, but the course had a lot of very long holes and it would have taken us a lot longer with all four of us - as it was, we were quite slow and let the people behind us jump in front after a few holes of feeling embarrassed by our slow progress. The course was really nice, with wide fairways divided by forests full of all of the cool Ozzie birds, including some noisy kookaburras. There isn't much undergrowth, so we managed to do the whole course without losing any balls, and in fact we gained two when hunting for our own balls in the forest. I think this means that we have to golf at least once more while we're here, perhaps on a course with lots of water features, so that we can use up the balls and not have to bring them home with us. (Luggage weight for the return journey is already a big consideration in all of our decisions about what to buy and what to do without).
After golfing, Chris went out for some cricket with the boys while I made his favourite (gourmet) mac n'cheese for supper and a mocha cake. It was warm enough to eat outside on the patio, though a little funny to be eating in the dark but warm air. The boys have both suffered some bug bites on their ankles, which have swelled up to give Sol a Cankle.
The final excitement to share this week has been the school sports carnivals. These are the opportunity for the four school "houses" to compete against each other for house points, as in Harry Potter. At Rio's school, the kids had sprayed their hair in their house colours and brought in decorated stuffed animals and other accoutrements. There was a very large parent paparrazi, well served by a cappucino van and a bake stand run by the parents' association. It was the warmest day of the week so far, so the kids were throwing off their shoes and donning their hats and sunscreen. In fact, most of them chose to participate in their sports events with bare feet, something which surprised me but Rio adapted to it happily.
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