april in sydney - day three

The word for today is wet.

Wet, wet, wet, wet, wet. Not that it really stopped us from doing very much... and it was only really a problem first thing this morning... but it's definitely been a theme.

I had a much better sleep last night... whether it was because I was all tuckered out after all the running around yesterday plus all the soaking up of culture we did last night, or whether it was as simple as rearranging my pillows, I'm not completely sure. But I only woke up just before 7am, and Ma and I were planning on heading out to breakfast nice and early this morning, so I had a bit of a mad scramble to get ready.

Before said scramble (okay, it wasn't that panicked, really) I messaged Ma to inform her of the fact that it was pelting down with rain, but I didn't get a reply after a couple of minutes... so I tried calling her, no answer.

And of course, after her fall yesterday, automatically my mind goes to all the dark and horrible places... but my mind often does that, so it's not that unusual. After trying to call her again, I decided to use the spare keycard to her room and go and make sure she was okay.

Fortunately, as soon as I opened the door to my room I could hear the shower running in her room, so I stopped freaking out and went and had my own shower.

When I was ready, I took my shoes and my bits and pieces to Ma's room and then headed off for Bar Fredo down in Walsh Bay. It didn't rain all the way there, but when it did rain, boy did we know about it (thankfully we'd taken our umbrellas). It would go from almost nothing to torrential downpour in a matter of a couple of seconds. And at one point I actually heard the rain hitting the trees in front of us before it happened all over us.

The walk to Walsh Bay is a hit of a hike, but overall it wasn't too bad... we both got very wet shoes, but mostly we stayed dry. And I also got a whole bunch of photos involving rain and water.

Unfortunately though, I'm not sure it was totally worth the trip (see, Sydney, again with the disappointing food)... I don't know if Café Fredo has changed owners or something, but it really isn't as good as it has been in the past. And I think it's gotten more expensive. Which is a double shame because I then had to pay a lot of money for a breakfast I didn't really enjoy all that much.

After we were done with breakfast we headed back to Circular Quay through the occasional torrents of rain, with the intention of catching a train up to St James Station for the Sydney Brick Show at David Jones.

Alas, no trains. All the stations are closed all weekend for some sort of maintenance. But fortunately they were running free shuttle buses from Circular Quay, so we just hopped on one of those instead.

Even though the store only opened just before 10am, and the Brick Show likewise started at 10am, when we got there the line to go up to the 7th floor snaked from one side of the 6th floor to the other. So much for getting in early on the first day to avoid the crowds.

It didn't take us that long to get up to the Brick Show once the line started moving though.

 

This is my first ever Lego event of this kind... we used to go to the Lego shows that would turn up every school holidays when I was a kid full of large scale models... but this was all fan-built creations (or MOC in the AFOL parlance).

And some of them were really, really, really good.

My personal favourite was the large, combined display of a number of different pirates/islands creations... there were a ton of cute little details in a number of the models, from giant spiders, really, really ugly harlots, to a Stormtrooper on vacation.

Some of the models were harder to photograph than others, but I did two runs... one with my big ass telephoto lens on to get close ups and details wherever I could, and then a second run to get some wider angles. I took a lot of photos... and somehow I get the feeling that I may be a little sore in the morning from all the bending.

I was hoping that they might have had Series 10 of the Lego minifigures for sale... sadly not... although there were a couple of people selling minifigures and accessories and really, really old Lego sets. I was half tempted by the full set of the London Olympic minifigures, but they were kind of expensive, I did however grab a couple of the Chima figures that I was interested in, but didn't want to buy whole sets to get my hands on.

We ended up spending well over an hour, which was a little bit surprising, given the fact that there weren't perhaps as many exhibitors as I had expected. Granted I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but there were some seemingly very empty areas, and also some areas that got really crowded.

Eventually we'd had enough... I'd photographed everything that I could, we'd seen everything and were pretty much done, so we headed over to Westfield Sydney's foodcourt for a beverage. Unlike yesterday, the foodcourt has pretty much the right amount of people in it... it wasn't empty, but you could actually go places and buy things.

We grabbed a smoothie from the really nice fruit/juice place I can never remember the name of, as well as a couple of massive chocolate covered strawberries and pondered our next move.

I figured since I was already in a Lego related groove, we could pop across to Myer on the other side of Pitt Street Mall and have a look to see what they had in their Lego stock (okay, I'll admit, the only reason I went to look was to see if they had the Series 10 minifigs).

It only took me a few minutes to work out that they didn't, so we headed down to the basement foodcourt to grab a bunch of those little bottles of juice they seem to have everywhere but Adelaide (really, somebody needs to get on that, asap).

And since it's fairly easy to get from the Myer building over to QVB by taking the "tunnel" between the two buildings, we did exactly that... stopping off at the cutest little store called Pylones, which was full of the most adorable homewares.

Once we got to QVB we didn't really have a destination exactly, so we headed up to the top floor to check out Hobbyco... and there we found some vinyl toy action... yaaaay!

And then it was back to the hotel to drop off our purchases and unbox some vinyl.

We didn't really have much of a plan for what to do for the rest of the afternoon, but Ma kind of wanted to head "over the bridge", and I had a vague thought that photographing Luna Park, at least the outside, could be interesting... so we headed down to Circular Quay again.

Unsurprisingly, now that I think about it, we discovered that the buses that go across the bridge don't leave from Circular Quay. Yes, I know, it's a "dur" moment... give me a break, I've had other things on my mind. So rather than trekking all the way back up the hill in search of Bridge related buses, we decided to just hop on any old random ferry and see where that took us.

And that's pretty much exactly what we did... we picked a platform at random, and a ferry more or less at random... although the one we ended up choosing (the Darling Harbour/Balmain East line) stopped at Luna Park (although we didn't get off).

Our ferry for the trip was one of the First Fleet Class ferries (which are all share the name of an original First Fleet ship), Alexander... which I think are my favourite classes... they're little and squat and green and beige, and they're always the ones I enjoy seeing scooting around in the harbour.

I enjoy ferries... I think I've said it before but it's an altogether civilised way to travel... and while I'm sure that for some people it's just the most efficient way to get from A to B on their daily commute, especially if those two places are on opposite sides of the water, I don't think it would ever not really, really enjoy it. Even with small children making random annoying noises for no reason and generally being slightly painful.

Fortunately they either got off or moved inside the ferry about halfway through the trip.

I'm not sure how long the trip took all up... although the timetable would seem to indicate that it took about 50 minutes for the round trip... which is strange because it didn't seem that long.

And the weather also cleared up for the first time all day while we were out on the water, which was nice...

When we got back to Circular Quay we picked up a timetable for pretty much every other ferry line in existence.

Then we headed to the Opera House concourse for something warm to drink (and thankfully after the dumplings last night, the same place actually makes a decent beverage... mmm hot chocolatey goodness) and after thumbing through the timetables, we decided that since we'd both enjoyed ourselves so much and we had these very expensive tickets that let us ride as many things as we want, as often as we want, we should go again on another line, and maybe a slightly longer trip... or at least one that went somewhere we hadn't been before.

And because the ferry riding deities were looking out for us, when we got there, the SuperCat Class ferry, Susie O'Neill was actually already there ready to go. I'll admit, I don't like the new fancy ferries half as much as the old ones, but it was something different.

As we started to take off, it did begin to spit with rain, which was a bit of a bummer because sitting in the front seats in that class of ferry, you actually can't see a damn thing out of the front windows other than the front of the ferry and the sky.

Fortunately, like with all the rain today, it didn't last long and once we were underway, I went out onto the bow with my camera (fitted with my telephoto lens this time, which actually came in handy, oddly enough).

I tell you what, once those SuperCats get going, it's a whole world of DIY facelift standing right at the front... I could actually feel my face being pushed back by the wind. Although I'm not sure if that says more about my face or the strength of the wind.

Anyway, it was a lovely ferry ride, we saw a bunch of places we hadn't seen before, there were pretty sailboats for Ma to ogle, there were lots of photos for me to take, what with the stormy skies and the fact that the sun was setting... I think there will possibly be some horrible shots amongst the ones I took though given that on occasion the ferry lurched like crazy just as I was taking the photo.

Sadly, halfway through the return trip my camera's battery finally gave up the ghost, which is pretty good, given the fact that I didn't have it fully charged when we left and I've taken a grand total of 932 photos currently... and we still have Manly to go tomorrow... I just wish I could remember how many photos that SD card will hold.

When we got back to Circular Quay it was pretty much dark... which is a little odd, given that we've usually been here in November or February previously (other than my solo trip last April), so the light stays around for a lot longer and I don't think either of us is quite used to it suddenly being pitch black at 6pm here. It always feels much, much later.

We then took a wander up Elizabeth Street to find the Bendigo Bank ATM that's up that way since I think we were both running kind of low on cash. Plus I don't really want to have to deal with my new cards/accounts from the bank until we get home... so I drew out way more cash than I'll need, but I'd rather have it than not.

Our very definite dinner plans this evening were to go to Wagamama... I really do love that place so very much... and rather than heading back the way we'd come, we kind of wended our way down some of the windy streets between the bank and Bridge Street.

We were stopped at one corner, waiting for the lights to change when this older guy who had crossed the road the other way walked right up to me... and I mean right up, way inside my personal space up and said "That's a good one". I honestly had no idea what he was talking about, but I'm also not sure if he was actually talking to me or even knew that I was there because at no point did he actually make eye contact with me, I think he may have been talking to the dancing pixies in his head. He wasn't aggressive, but he was in my space, so I asked him what he meant... no response... so with one hand I moved Ma back around behind me, just in case, as he took a step forward and said something about "yeah Debbie, turn those four fucking 9's upside down"... at which point I was already moving back away from him, Ma still behind me.

And then he just wandered off up the street. When I looked behind me I think he must have been talking to the For Lease sign on building behind me, because the realtor's name was Deb something and the phone number did have four nines at the end.

Ma said that she also saw him stopping to talk to a doorway further up the street... so yeah, a tiny bit scary for a second there, but I really don't think he even knew I was there.

Fortunately dinner was a vast improvement on crazy street people getting up in my face.

We'd never actually gotten around to having any lunch... beverage yes, lunch no... so I think we were both a bit starving by the time we got to Wagamama.

Sadly, they didn't have any tori kara age (sad face), which is one of my favourites... but as always we got a big bowl of edamame and some dumplings and then we both decided on the ramen... chicken for me, spicy vegetables for Ma. So good... just so, so good. Although I did feel like there was less ramen in my bowl than previous times, but that could just be my memory playing tricks and the fact that I was starvingly hungry.

I'm always impressed at Wagamama how they never write down what you've ordered... well, they do, on your paper placemats, but they don't take it away, they just have all the numbers for everything memorised and we've never had anybody bring us the wrong thing. Now THAT is good restauranting!

We finished off the meal with some coconut crème brulee with a chocolate/banana spring roll and even though we'd eaten a lot of food either of us felt overly stuffed... just comfortably full.

And then once we got our respective legs working again, and Ma finished fighting with the zipper on her jacket, we wandered back to the hotel.

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april in sydney - day two

I really didn't have the greatest night's sleep last night. I'll partially chalk it up to it being a new hotel room once again and partially due to the fact that this is the first bed other than my own that I've slept in since I injured my back.

I don't remember waking up throughout the night, but I did wake up with a headache, although that could partly be a lack of hydration since Ma and I both forget to drink water when we're wandering around.

I woke up fairly early... although a couple of times I just shut my eyes again and went back to sleep, but by the time I got up it was still only about 6am. So I did what I always do... both on holiday and off, fucked around with my phone until it was time to get my ass into gear.

After I had a shower and got ready I took my camera bag and whatnot and with my shoes in hand, just like every I do on every trip we make together, I padded next door to Ma's room.

We made a plan of attack for the first part of the morning, at least until our main expedition could take place... first we headed across the street to drop all the postcards for The Junior Nut House in the mail (with a brief stop at one of those many and varied Sydney kiosk venders for some fruit and veg nibblies for later), then off to breakfast, followed by the purchasing of appropriate public transport tickets.

There wasn't really an exact plan for breakfast, so we decided to head down to The Rocks, maybe to the awesome French patisserie for something, but on the way we went past The Morrison on George Street, which we'd looked at from across the street yesterday and thought could be an option... so we figured why the hell not... plus we didn't want anything all that massive.

It wasn't bad either... very funky décor, kind of an inside/outside/rustic vibe, and seemingly quite popular with the CBD Executrites, since the place was full of them.

Although the waitress was either slightly snooty, or bored, or just not into us or something, because she wasn't overly pleasant... to make up for her we did have a quite cute (more personality than looks, although he wasn't bad), very gay waiter who kept bringing us the wrong things. First the wrong beverages, then when he got mine right he brought Ma a cappuccino instead of a latte... then he brought us out the wrong breakfast. Actually it wasn't that they were wrong in the sense that they got our order wrong, more that he kept trying to give us the stuff that was destined for another table.

We both had the bacon and egg butty... which was good, especially the spicy tomato sauce, although I'm not sure how well a brioche bun worked with egg and tomato sauce... it was a little too delicate and prone to turning to mush I think. The hot chocolate was excellent though.

After breakfast we headed down to Circular Quay to purchase our highly overpriced bus/train/ferry tickets.

Now, just as an aside to all the Sydney folk who read my blog: If I want to be able to catch the train, the bus and the ferry, with multiple trips that can be used for a long period of time, ie not just a weekly ticket, what the hell do I ask for? We had one last time but I don't know if that included the trains. And why the hell don't you have a more efficient and cheaper system for tickets... $44 for a week-long ticket feels somewhat excessive, even if you can catch three different types of transport with it.

Then, because we were already down by Circular Quay, we wandered down to the Opera House, for no real concrete reason, just because we were there and it was there and I wanted to get some more photos when the light was in a different place. We also had a look under the concourse at some possible places to eat tonight before we head to the Opera House... and it didn't look too bad.

After some aimless wandering, we came back to the hotel to drop some stuff off, take a bathroom break and then headed off down to Circular Quay to catch the train out to Newtown.

We made it all the way down the hill, and were on the home stretch, walking across Albert Street, with me slightly in front, more or less like we have done a billion and one times, and then from behind me I hear this shout of, I think, "Oh", or some other random noise of not-goodness that made me turn around, just in time to see Ma halfway through a stumble that she was too far away from me for me to help her, and all I could do was watch her do a giant faceplant.

A million and one things rush through my head, most of them involve hoping that she's okay, but I started doing the usual cataloguing of injuries and possible problems that I usually run through when I do my own faceplant.

Mostly though she just scared the living daylights out of me. I think I was running on more adrenaline afterwards than she was. But we picked her up, dusted her off, got her onto the footpath on the other side of the street and assessed the damage.

Fortunately she wasn't all that badly hurt, she didn't scrape her knees up, although they may be bruised tomorrow... she did scrape her elbow along the road though... and the weirdest of all, I think her glasses must have smacked her in the eye socket somehow, because pretty much immediately the skin over her eyelid turned into a giant, puffy bruise, almost like a blood blister. Gross as hell, but she says it didn't actually hurt, it was just weird having something over your eye like that.

By the end of the day the swelling had gone down a bit but the bruising had spread out and was kind of sliding down the side of her eye socket, so it looked like she was wearing some really horrible eyeshadow.

Because the graze on her elbow was bleeding, we hobbled off to the chemist to chat with the somewhat blasé chemist and get Ma some "bruise cream" (I'm not sure what it actually is but it's supposed to be good for bruises) and some of the biggest band-aids that I have ever seen in my life.

And then we, very carefully, headed up to the station to wait for the next train to Newtown.

Poor Ma... I've tried not to let her get more than an arm's length or so away from me when we're walking around all day, and have probably asked her twice as much as usual if she's okay... and I usually ask her that quite a lot when we're out and about anyway.

The train ride was fine... other than me asking Ma if she was okay a lot, and the semi running theme of noisy children who fortunately go away after short periods of time.

We got off at Newtown Station and wandered up King Street a little, found some Sydney street art, finally, and I released some more eyeBirds into the wild... if anyone sees one, let me know!

Our first stop on King Street was the Crumpler Clearance Store to check out whether they had any of the Hillman Hunter mini courier bags, since they're now a discontinued line. Turns out that yes, they did, even though they only had black left.

Actually compared with how the store looks in the interior photos on Google Maps, it was remarkably sparse... like almost no merchandise sparse. But I guess it's their clearance store and if they're not clearancing a lot of stuff. We did get what we went there for though, even if it's not in the colours we would have chosen.

We continued up King Street in the opposite direction from the way we were planning on heading, just to have a look around... and in the window of Holy Sheet, of all places, there were some sparkly tailed mermen ornaments hanging in the window... I've seen them before, they're by December Diamonds, who do a lot of that kind of ornament, but I've never found anywhere that would ship them here. Turns out the guy who runs the store was given on by his sister and he contacted them and ordered them for his shop.

So I bought one... Tattoo... it's wrong, but still kinda hot.

Then we switched to the other side of the street and wandered back down King Street in search of a couple of places that the Kidrobot website had listed as stocking their merchandise.

It was not a successful expedition, and if we hadn't been going that way anyway to May's Lane then I would have been really annoyed.

As it turns out, the first place no longer exists and the second place definitely doesn't stock their stuff anymore... or at least they don't have anything in stock at present and there really isn't any indication that they ever did.

So I'll be sending an email to the nice folk at Kidrobot when I get home informing them of both of those facts.

Fortunately Newtown seems to be where all of Sydney's street art lives... okay, maybe not ALL of it, but it certainly has its fair share... so there were lots of photos taken, as is pretty self-evident from the contents of this post. And I also released a bunch more eyeBirds as we sent along... I'm not sure exactly how many to be honest.

Eventually we found ourselves at May's Lane... which I've been wanting to do since we started coming to Sydney.

Like all places where street art tends to accumulate, there are times when it's all very much one kind of style, and others when it's a whole other kind of style, or you might miss a piece by your favourite artist because it happens to get covered over the week before you get there (not that that was the case, at least as far as I know).

There were some very good pieces... some were not so great... and some weren't my preferred style, but were still good... and some were fairly m'eh.

But I'm glad I can finally say "Yes, I've been to May's Lane".

It was however, very difficult to keep an overly solicitous eye on Ma when she kept wandering off while I was taking photos...

We couldn't decide on what to do about lunch, and while there may be some excellent places in Newtown to eat (suggestions are more than welcome, as are suggestions for other places besides King Street to visit in Newtown), we didn't see anywhere that really got us excited enough to walk all the way back up King Street, so we hopped back on the train at St Peters and came back into the city.

After an emergency pitstop at David Jones... which involved finding the damn bathrooms across two different floors... we headed up to the foodcourt at the top of Westfield Sydney.

Now, everybody say it with me... Westfield Sydney foodcourt at 1pm on a Friday afternoon is not a nice place to be. There were just too, too, too, too, too, too many people... people getting in the way of people left, right and centre... people getting in the way of the people getting in the way of people... and all of those people getting in our way. It was just too hard to move around, let alone trying to pick somewhere to eat, and then having to actually try and buy anything.

So, by mutual agreement, we got the hell out of there.

Instead we decided to head down to The Rocks in search of viddles after a brief stopover at the hotel on the way just to drop off our purchases. One of the Sydney foodtrucks, the Eat Art Truck, was down by the Passenger Terminal, so we went down there to sample their wares.

I had the pulled pork bun, while Ma opted for the Cajun chicken bun. The pulled pork was very tasty... not as good as the pulled pork at Pearl's Diner maybe, but still very tasty.

After our late lunch, we wandered around the bits of the Rocks Market that were around... which, honestly, wasn't very much. I swear that there's been more stuff around on a Friday on previous trips, although my memory could be playing tricks on me.

Sadly there wasn't anything that looked particularly good dessert-wise, so we decided to stop off at Guylian. I need to have a look back at what I said when we stopped off their on a previous trip, because while the drinks were quite good, the cakes were okay but not stellar, but the service was kind of shit.

We didn't even order anything that required cooking or heating or anything. All they needed to do was literally take it out of the display case and put it on a plate, so I really have no idea why it took so much longer for the cakes to come out than for our beverages to arrive.

Of course we could have been like the old English lady who came in and must have order a coffee and a cake, and had a bit of a dummy spit due to the fact that they didn't arrive at the same time and she was finished her coffee but the cake was nowhere to be seen.

To be honest, I don't think that that is an isolated incident with them. And Emily, our waitress, didn't really seem all that bothered with being useful.

I think I need to add a note to not bother going there alongside the note not to visit the Westfield Sydney foodcourt during rush hour.

Anyway, we wandered back up the street to the hotel for our afternoon break before heading out for some dinner and Captain Jack Sparrow at the Opera House.

I was actually pretty tired, so I ended up laying on my bed for a while rather than sitting down and typing out this post... and I ended up feeling a little weird. My face got kinda hot and my feet got very cold... whether that was due to the fact that I wasn't wearing any socks, my feet were hanging off the bed and the door to the balcony was wide open... or whether it had more to do with a distinct lack of water being drunk by both Ma and myself over the last couple of days, I'm not sure. But eventually I got up and hammered out a bunch of notes for this post before getting ready.

I could probably have taken a little more time to be honest...

In an effort to make sure that we had enough time to have dinner and still be early enough for the show, we ended up being way, way, way too early.

We'd decided on one of the places on the lower concourse of the Opera House, but there wasn't a huge amount of choice (I'm sure I had something nice with noodles from there when I was here last April), but neither of us were really all that hungry, so we settled on dumplings.

Once again I don't think either of us was particularly wowed by either the dumplings themselves (good, not great) or by the service... we didn't get any plates, or any dipping sauces... just the bamboo steamer stack of dumplings and some chopsticks.

Sydney, you kind of need to lift your game. Or else direct me to affordable, yet excellent venues. We've probably had as many disappointing food experiences on this trip as good ones so far.

After dinner we headed into the Opera House for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl performed with live music by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with American conductor, Richard Kaufman.

We had pretty good seats... right in the middle, and with something like this, so long as you can still see the screen, you don't need to be that close to the front. Which we weren't... while we were in the Circle, we weren't all that far back, even though we had to go all the way up to the highest door in the place to get into the Concert Hall.

We’ve only ever been in the Hall, briefly, once before, on our first trip to Sydney when we did the Opera House tour, but neither of us has been to a performance in the Concert Hall before. It really is a stunningly beautiful venue. And given the fact that the interior was, I think, designed in the last 1950's or sometime in the 1960's, it doesn't feel dated in the slightest and has an incredibly timeless feel to the design.

Normally I would probably do a whole post for the concert itself, but I don't know how much I actually have to say about it.

Ma and I have seen the first Pirates movie a number of times (I've probably seen it more than Ma as one of the audio commentaries is one of my favourites), so there wasn't anything new there, although seeing it alongside around 2000 people is something new. Although only about half a dozen of them bothered to wear pirate accessories.

But watching it while listening to music being performed live is a whole other thing. Oddly, at first I wasn't sure if they were playing as well as the soundtrack, because I couldn't always see when the musicians were playing, but as soon as some of the big rousing numbers kicked off and the whole orchestra got involved it was pretty amazing. And it was fun seeing how some of the particularly iconic (at least for me) musical moments in Pirates are achieved (and I think, more often than not, the answer is "violins doing something really cool".

And there were even some musical moments that I wasn't even aware of... so I may need to go back and watch the movie again, paying particular attention to the music.

It was definitely worth going to see though, and not bad for something that I found completely by accident.

The sitting for over two hours wasn't brilliant for my back, but my body hasn't been complaining all that much.

After the concert was over we joined the huge throng of people making their way from the Opera House and back into the city... and found ourselves walking along with a couple of the pirate boys from the audience, which was fun to watch.

Thus endeth the second day...

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