My night of new experiences

It's very rare to come by true friends. I can't remember if I've said it before in a past blog post, but I'm not one of those people who have hundreds of friends. I am however, one of the lucky few to have just a handful of really close friends. I think I prefer it that way. Quality over quantity right?

Although I never need to be reminded of how wonderful my close friends are (and how lucky I am to have found them), tonight the reminder was as big and bright as the sun itself. 

On my way home from uni, my friend Ruth called me and told me to "get my ass home". When I got there, a group of my friends jumped out and surprised me. And so began my night of one new thing after the other :)

My friends got me into the car and all I knew was that where ever it was we were going, we were late and so we gunned it down the freeway :P We were driving in the Fremantle area when I saw a big sign for Fremantle Prison. I had spoken to Ruth before about how I wanted to do a tour of Fremantle Prison when she saw my Day Zero Project list.

The tour was amazing! We did the Torchlight Tour which runs Wednesday and Friday nights. It was an hour and thirty minutes of pure spooky. The prison grounds was larger than I thought, and yet the prison cells were tiny and claustrophobic. I could hardly imagine what it would be like to be a prisoner there. Some of the stories that the tour guide told us were just horrendous. Prison life was anything but pleasant. We were told that the youngest prisoner was 8 years old. It's just too insane to imagine, and yet who knows how bad it currently is in other countries around the world. 

Fremantle prison was officially closed in 1991, the year that I was born. We just couldn't believe that some of the awful things that went on in that prison were going on up until only 22 years ago. I don't want to spoil too much of the tour, but if you are keen to go, then I highly recommend it. There are lots of different tours to choose from so I'm sure there will be something for everyone.

The next leg of the Friday night adventure was yet another surprise. My friends took me to a place in Frementle called Little Creatures Brewery. I had heard so much about it and mentioned it to Ruth and Nhi in passing many times so I was so excited to be finally going in. 

Little Creatures is a huge place. It is a two storey warehouse setting with a large stainless steel cylinder tanks. There are just so many great quirky things about this place that I just don't have enough blog space to explain. I just really liked the atmosphere of the place. On the way in, my friend heard some people say that they had been there for 6 hours, and after being inside I can see why. It's got a very relaxed feel to the place and the serving sizes are made to share. 

Some of the lovely art work on display...up on the walls of the corridor leading to the toilet

The menu was great and they were very good to make some of our orders vegan friendly. We shared between us a pearl couscous salad, roast pumpkin almond dukkha and sage oil pizza, mushroom and olive pizza and fries with aoli (the menu has it as "frites"...pronounced "frits"). My friend also got the barramundi which he said was good. 

None of us had ever had pearl couscous before, but this was one good salad! It had almonds and raisins too which is always a good addition to a salad. The pearl couscous was cooked perfectly. Not too firm and not too soft. It has a lovely starchy taste but nowhere near as heavy as pasta or anything like that. 

To summarise, Little Creatures is a great place to eat and catch up with friends. 8/10! :) 
Note: it is a little bit pricey though so make sure you're not broke.

Our last leg of the journey was dessert at my friends new apartment. Ruth made amazing vegan carrot cake muffins with raspberry sauce. She got the recipe from the website Oh She Glows, which I totally recommend you to have a look at if you're feeling like something vegan. The carrot cake muffins were so lovely and moist and tasted like caramel...**drool** They were very delicious and make for a really yummy anytime-of-the-day-sweet-treat :)

Every minute of my surprise Friday night adventure was forever memorable. By the end of the night my face muscles hurt from all the smiling and laughing and I was filled with such an intense feeling of love. One of the things I really love most about my friends is they they know how important this 'doing something new' project is to me and they all got in on it and gave me not only one something new for the day, but a whole night full of them. Ruth once told me that she prefers to have experiences over material things and tonight was a perfect example of how a new and fun experience wins over material gifts any day.