My Aunt the Carnivorous Moose: Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 330

It's no secret I love my birthday.

LOVE IT.

What makes it so magical these days is the presence of my beautiful caring guy, Steve. He is the most special, wonderful part of my life - yes caramel, he eclipses even you - and I am intensely glad to have him in my life.

But of course, I still love and adore my many fabulous friends, many of whom took to Twitter, Facebook (mostly) and texting to wish me a Happy Birthday. Love them all.

Pop star Mika even sent me a greeting ... we ll his automated social media thingy but loved the thought!

* these final 3 pages of birthday greetings were from 26th Nov here in Oz BUT 25th Nov on the other side of the dateline.

Caught up quickly with Waz when he drove us over to collect Steve's car where he had parked it near the restaurant in Enmore; we had coffee at Annie's cafe and then Steve and I rushed to get ready to catch train to lunch ...

Hot damn hot! Quite a contrast to the chilled temps of my birthday last year.

Another part to my gift. Waz is so generous.

Thankfully after getting dressed in a hurry and enduring hot temperatures on 5 minute walk to stattion, we got a CHILLED air con'd train to Central and then an even colder one to Circular Quay. Birthday blessings aplenty!

But being a sunny day and this had not occurred to either of us when we formulated our finely tuned travel schedule, EVERYONE decided to go to Manly! While we got tickets reasonably quickly thanks to a lovely ferries person who pointed out free ticket-buying windows on the non-station of the queue to get on the ferry, we couldn't squeeze on the 12.30 ferry and had to wait till the 1pm one.

Thankfully there was a wonderful cooling breeze on the dock and the ferry itself was chilled ... ane the views? AWESOME as always.

Voyager of the Seas in town

Now getting to Pilu was an ordeal. Taxi driver seemed to know where he was going but didn't actually and we ended up in Harbord and Steve had to use Google Maps to get us to Pilu albeit 1/2 hour late (we had rung ahead though so table was still waiting for us.)

And the feast began ...

Started with ...

A special extra treat from the chef. YUM.

First up was "Primi" or entree and this is what we had ...

Ravioli - my choice - exquisite

Spaghetti - Steve's - DELISH

Then on to Secondi ...

Sublime. BEST. ROAST PORK. EVER.

And though we were full ... VERY full ... we had dessert ...

I had ginger and caramel gelato and Steve had strawberry and basil sorbet (the sorbet was divine).

Finished off with peppermint tea (Steve) and lemongrass and ginger (me) and petits fours and then after 3.5 hours - best and longest lunch ever - we left the restaurant at 5.30, waited 20 minutes for a Silver Service taxi back to Manly (wasn't awful waiting view-wise as Freshwater Beach is gorgeous; but still hot and sunny) and then ferry back to Circular Quay and train home by 7.15.