Posts Tagged ‘sydney’
Yum Cha @ Emperor’s Garden, Sydney
One of our traditions going to Sydney for events/gigs/parties/whatever is to have a yum cha breakfast the next day – usually close to midday, and usually at Emperor’s Garden in Chinatown (right across from Paddy’s markets).
We eat a lot of steamed dishes – including the must-have BBQ Pork Buns. Yums.
And finish with the best coconut jelly around ;)
People-watching Pre-Amanda Palmer at the Sydney Opera House
No photos from the gig, since it was truly awesome and I spent the whole time falling in love with her even more, but got a few outside the Opera House, on the steps ;)
There were so many girls in awesome corsets, petticoats, hats, dresses… didn’t snap any (focussed) shots of them though.
Fairy Bread!
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Diamant Hotel Sydney – Take 2
After the relatively disappointing visit to Sydney two months ago, Halloween weekend was the chance for everyone to make it up to us.
Starting with the Diamant Hotel, Sydney…
Wine and chocolates on arrival… Rish tells me the Lindt chocolates were yum. They smelled great!
The room this time around was free, with the wine, parking, and then a bottle of diet coke from the minibar thrown in to make up the difference…
I love how comfortable the beds are! One day, I’m going to have to stay there for a reason that means I sleep in it for more than 4 hours! *bliss*
The balcony courtyard rooms are on the 2nd floor, we were the second one from the left of the building, side onto Kings Cross Road.
The promised courtyard.
The view from the balcony. Hello, georgeous Sydney day!
Sushi from somwhere along South Dowling St. Don’t remember the name, but it was delicious, on the Eastern side of the street, and very close to William St.
Great to have an excellent stay the second time around :) Will definitely think of staying at the Diamant another time, if I’m dacing away in the Cross :p Or we want the most comfortable beds in the world.
Perfect place for the sunset.
Who said it could be November?
Halloween night was good (costume and hotel room pics to come later this week), amazing how much you can fit into 23 hours in Sydney :) A few hours sleep, we managed to drive home safely… watched the cool storm coming in over the wind farm at Lake George.
(wk 353
- Hairbrush :: bristles
- Sneak :: peek
- Hole :: in the bucket
- Horror :: movie, right there on my tv… shocking me right out of my brain (?Sherbert)
- Standard :: soy latte
- Mailbox :: overlimit
- Attachment :: disorder
- Type :: face
- Nails :: bed of nails
- Storage :: self
Sorta Satisfactory Sydney
We went up to Sydney on the weekend for a PJs themed party… Way too many things didn’t go to plan…
We stayed at the Diamant who mixed up out booking – so rather than a Suite with champagne on arrival we had a regular room… which would have been nice if that’s what I paid for. The bed WAS deliciously comfy! The hotel was fully booked with other party people, so they couldn’t move us.. All seems to have been resolved now, they were actually very good with the manager calling us today once she was back on deck for the week to sort something out :)
We’ll have the right room on them next time we’re up – for Halloween!
There were also ‘issues’ with the venue of the party… it seems that even if you’ve booked the room for a private function, they may just open it up to anyone. Sausagefest? ugh.
Plus Macca’s wireless HATED us in the morning…
But we had Yum Cha for ‘breakfast’ on Sunday! Yum Yum!
So, what should my Halloween costume be?
In Rainbows
Sydney was a grey old place last week. AS soon as you’d think it was sunny, it would start spitting on your again. “Sunshower!” could be exclaimed, to try to keep the spirits up, until it got wetter and wetter, and you knew you had to use your umbrella.
That didn’t stop me on Wednesday from taking my travel pass ticket and hopping around trains, busses and ferries all day, visiting places I hadn’t really been before, like heading up the river towards Parramatta, hopping off early “because there was a bus waiting at the wharf that I could catch somewhere” and generally just being a little bit silly :p
Burwood was good to wind up in, meant I got to grab a Chinese custard bun and browse Hello Kitty items in various trinket stores. Always good :)
Headed back into the city via Redfern, got scared by the Ibises once more.
Because I’m a dork, I visited the David Jones foodhall. You know, just to browse…
more to come when I get around to uploading more photos :)
Addison Hotel, Kensington
Came back last night from a week across Sydney and Newcastle, with more photos than I really need to deal with!
On our first night in Sydney, we stayed at the Addison Hotel which is on Anzac Parade Kensington – chosen because it was about 2 block’s walk from the University of NSW, where Rish had a conference, and where we stayed the rest of the time in Sydney.
I’ll have to admit that, which is room was nice enough, I didn’t sleep too well, bed was hard and I kept going numb, plus I think I may or may not have been worrying about missing my alarm in the morning to trek across the city to my workshop on at Novotel Olympic Park… Rish swears he had a good night’s rest though so it’s probably just me being a little loopy! :) TV had free to air channels, plus a whole heap of Chinese-language television. I was watching a doco on SBS for a while before sleep.
The highlight though was discovering that I’d ordered a package that included not just breakfast, but dinner too at the restaurant downstairs! (for $115, plus the $4.95 booking fee through Wotif)
We didn’t eat as much as we perhaps could have, had we not gone to the welcome reception for Rish’s conference and filled ourselves up on finger food and wine! But, it was yummy all the same. :D No idea about the breakfast – I was out the door at 7am, which is when they were starting to take it around to the rooms. I’m sure it was a standard toast, juice, cereal affair, though. :)
Fruit Tingles
So Saturday night was Spent in Sydney for a high school friend’s 27th birthday. Let’s get over that since he’s turning 27, the rest of us will be shortly. Great views of the Harbour Bridge, good company, and probably too many fruit tingles.
Fruit Tingle Recipe:
2 parts vodka
1 part blue curacao
1 part raspberry cordial
top up with lemonade
Divide among glasses.
Repeat this until someone (Phil this time) is vomiting purple.
Good times (yes, it was so high school)
It’s been awhile – Unconscious Mutterings
- Be mine :: Valentine
- Ecstatic :: Elastic
- Orderly :: Manner
- Sebastian :: Belle
- Sore :: thumb
- Don’t need :: chicken tonight
- Rockstar :: Look at me
- Tinfoil :: hat
- Addiction :: Jane’s
- Where? :: What who when why how
Party, Yum Cha, Boost and Home.
I think we’ve figured out our “Sydney Routine”.
- Check into the hotel (that we’ve booked through Wotif.com or through a new place like Hotels Combined) about 2pm after remember again that we hate the stretch along South Dowling Drive…
- Find lunch. This time around we stuffed ourselves silly with Manchurian Sweet and Sour Pork and some dumplings in Chinatown.
- Shop a bit. *grins*
- See what the hotel’s facilities are like. We checked out the pool. Great view from the 8th floor of the Citigate… but getting cold. And too many kiddies!
- Get ready for whatever the evening has in store for us
- Party?
- Stumble back to the hotel just before sunrise. Not get much sleep before checkout
- YUM CHA BREAKFAST. Highlight of any Sydney trip. Disserting the evening before. Rehydrating from any excessive consumpion of alcohol with the green chinese tea on offer
- Wander/Shop/GET A BOOST SMOOTHIE
- Leave! Take shifts driving because neither one of us has had enough sleep that we really should be in control of a large machine hurtling down the Hume at 100km/h.
- Home and bed
The Citigate was good. Especially for $145/night! We had a room on the second top floor (17th) and the view was gorgeous… from the window near the lift, not necessarily from the room (a great view of UTS). Bed was large, comfortable (for the little time we spent in it!) and the staff were friendly. Shower cap was provided (the one thing I love in a hotel bathroom) … and it was right in Chinatown which fits in with all of life’s plans!
Back to reality again. We signed the lease for our new place yesterday. Get the keys on Tuesday and move on the 1st. Busy busy busy from here on in…
(for the other bloggers and for the facebookers out there… Hotels Combined is given $20 to charity if you blog about them, or $5 if you join their Facebook group. Details here)
It’s moving time!
Gee B1 and B2 proved great conversational starters in my younger years…
Anyway… (Do you know what time it is?)
We’ve got ourselves a place very very close to where I work… meaning walking to work every day! *bounce* Slightly larger than we have now, but technically a townhouse… though it’s not a little box courtyard like some.
So, it’s time to start packing up the house, cleaning for inspections an so forth. Moving weekend will be the “long” weekend at the start of November (I get the Tuesday off as a public holiday for Melbourne Cup.. oh I mean “Family and Community Day” o some such tripe so will of course be taking Monday of on Flex)… means two days to move out and clean the old place, and two days to settle my life into a new egion of Canberra. :p So I’ll have now lived Inner North, Inner South, Woden and now in Weston Creek. That leaves Belconnen, Tuggeranong and Gunghalin, right? Let’s not go there :p\
Will start the packing after this weekend. Have a mini-getaway to Sydney planned with Rish (yes, I pre poll voted for the election this afternoon. I like electronic voting! There’s an ‘undo’!)… Accomodation in a King Room at the Citigate… so looking forward to a swim.. and happy with Wotif for their rates *grins*
