A dozen oysters and a Slurpee please...
Trip Start
Dec 31, 2010
1
34
106
Trip End
May 13, 2011
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Saturday, February 5, 2011
After hours of chitchat and catching up, the three of us went to the Rocks night market for food. We had okonomiyaki and a great cheese and spinach flatbread. Eating it all on this hot evening as we people watched was fun. The night market in itself was impressive with lots of people cramming into various international food stalls.
Then it was back to the pub for one more drink – some more ale and for me a dry English style cider. After a little more story telling we made plans to meet up on Sunday and called it a goodnight.
Saturday we awoke to the most ridiculously hot day thus far. Not having the best of luck recently with the weather, today was definitely no exception. Walking around the city, the temperature topped out at a recorded 107 degrees F. The news was saying one of the hottest days in 50 years!! Great. Needless to say we spent a lot of time chasing down A/C and drinking cold drinks.
Our first stop was to the Sydney fish market. This fish market is advertized as the world's second largest. I think after Tsukiji in Tokyo, which we also love. Being seafood fanatics we could not miss this opportunity. The market was an impressive collection of smaller fish markets and restaurants all under one roof. We browsed at many of the sections and made some choices. Our first pick was the sashimi counter where you could point out how many inches of a particular fish you wanted and they would slice it up for you. We chose salmon, tuna, and kingfish. Our second choice was a dozen Pacific oysters that were brought in that morning and being shucked right in front of us. Not bad for $14. The last choices were lobster Monray (I think that is what they called it - a half spiny lobster with a potato and cheese crust on it) and a soft shell crab. It took some serious strategy to finally capture a table from the thousands of Chinese people that were there that day (Chinese New Year Celebration + Saturday + lunch time + 107 degree heat = you get the idea). Despite that the food was delicious. For the oyster lovers out there, the oysters here were a pacific variety that had a buttery and less metallic taste. Super fresh and delicious. The salmon was as good as any salmon I can ever remember having and I always love soft shell crab.
Once stuff we browsed a few more sections and went back to braving the heat. We walked back towards downtown and did something I haven’t done in like 15 years….we got a lemon-lime bitter Slurpee from 7-11. It was awesome! Just the thing we needed as we sweat gallons walking around. In order to stay out of the midday sun we went back to Queen Victoria building to cool off and enjoy some Italian soda.
Finally as the sun was beginning to go down and the heat to ease off we walked over to the botanical gardens. This huge park used to be farmland that was then turned into a waterfront walking park. Since then many native Australian species of plants and animal have thrived there. In particular we saw many species of birds. Walking along the waterfront we noticed they had a huge screen set up in the water and were getting ready to show an Alfred Hitchcock movie. What a way to see the movie, picnicking with some champagne and oysters and watching a movie on this giant screen with the city skyline and water as your backdrop. Unfortunately, the tickets were sold out or we would have been all over that in a heartbeat. Nevertheless, we had an excellent show of our own. As the sun began to set in the park the place came alive. Out came hundreds of flying foxes (bats) to swoop down low and drink out of the small pond. Also the huge white with yellow crest cockatoos showed up and started screeching. I felt like I was on animal planet and it was great to sit in the park watching the sunset with all the wildlife flying by.
We ended our day with nothing else but…another Slurpee. Bigger this time! Chugging that down we did some people watching (mostly the girls in really short skirts and ridiculously high heels – lots of them) on George street (the place to be seen) and headed home…yeah for air-conditioning!
