Saturday, April 19, 2008

Fremantle

Yesterday, I swam the 200 back in the morning. This is the indoor pool. The guys and girls alternate days in the indoor and outdoor competition pools. My 200 free and 400 free will be outside. I was a little worried about how I'd swim yesterday, given the late hour of my 800 free, my lack of warmdown afterwards, and the fact that restaurants in Perth don't seem to be open past 9 pm. After trying unsuccessfully for about an hour to find a place to eat after the 800, we finally gave up and made oatmeal and peanut butter at the hotel. It's good thing that's one of my favorite meals! But, I seem to have recovered okay and swam well yesterday morning. I went about the same time as I did at Worlds two years ago at Stanford (only .08 seconds slower) and got 4th place. I'm happy with that swim!




After swimming, we were starving! We had passed a little restaurant called "Woodpecker Pizza" on the way to the pool several times, so we decided to try it for lunch. It was yummy!! We split a shrimp, canadian bacon, and mushroom pizza. Man it tasted good! We both really liked the decor of the restaurant, too. Those are wine bottles hanging on the far wall in the picture. Every thing I've read says that it's not necessary to tip the servers, but it feels so weird. I always feel like we're cheating them out of something.



After lunch, we headed to Fremantle. It's about 20km south of Perth. Fremantle has quite a history of prisons. Most of the town and infrastructure was built by prisoners fresh off the convict ships from England. We toured the Fremantle Prison, which was in use from the 1850s until 1991. One of the most shocking aspects of the prison is that they used a "bucket system" for toilets...even in 1991. The prison guards even learned not to walk down the center of the main cell block or they'd end up with human waste dumped all over them from the upper cells.





Prisoners must have been shorter back in the 1850s!

After the tour, we did some shopping in the Fremantle Markets. If you've ever seen "The Amazing Race", the markets are somewhat like some of the markets they've been to on the show. Lots of little stalls, with vendors selling everything from jewelry to clothes to Aboriginal items to photos to boomerangs to food. We didn't have enough time to browse through everything we wanted to yesterday, so we're going back there this morning before I swim the 200 free in the afternoon.






We concluded the day with a fabulous dinner. I had a fillet, which is apparently pronounced "fill-it" here and Mom had duck breast. We also enjoyed a bottle of wine from New Zealand. Overall, it was a great day!

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