Sydney, part I

So Art had to travel to Sydney for business and I naturally had to go with him.  The city is amazing, I loved how there was a mix of historic and modern buildings in the city center.

The first day I checked out Darling Harbour, where the Sydney Aquarium and the Australian National Maritime Museum are. 

Darling Harbour (Australian National Maritime Museum on the left)

HMAS Vampire, Australian National Maritime Museum

Australian National Maritime Museum

 

 

I also went to Paddy's Market.  It's a huge building with tons of vendors, selling everything from clothes to food.  The Chinese Garden of Friendship was close, so I walked through it as well.  The garden was beautiful and I saw two weddings taking place.

 

Paddy's Market

 

Chinese Garden of Friendship

 

The highlight of my trip was the Sydney Opera House.  I took a guided tour and got to go inside some of the concert halls.  I'm not sure I had ever thought about how the building was constructed, but I was shocked/amazed when I saw it was concrete.  The history of this building is unbelievable.  In 1957, before construction began, estimations for the building were it would take 3 years and $7 million dollars to build.  In reality, it took 14 years and $102 million dollars to complete the Opera House.

 

View of the Sydney Opera House from the Royal Botanic Gardens

Inside of Sydney Opera House

Inside of Sydney Opera House

 

 

I'll have more on Sydney in my next post.  But before signing off, I have a special Sydney edition of Odd Store Names.

 

I spied this odd clothing store in a few shopping centers in Sydney.  The clothes were pretty cute, but were they sewn together, or just glued together?  We'll never know... 

 



A quick update for my fans!

I know it's been a while, so here's a really quick update for September. 

We started the month off in Taipei, Taiwan.  The flight was only about an hour and half from Hong Kong, so you can't beat that!  Taipei is big into street food, there's always someone selling something off a grill on almost every corner at almost any time of day.  We went to a night market that was basically a giant outside food court.  There were some very questionable things being consumed, but we stuck to things we could recognize. 

Yum, meat on a stick!

We went to the Taipei Zoo one day.  Not only was the actual zoo giant, the animal enclosures were all really large.  The highlight of the zoo was, of course, the panda.  We got to his enclosure right when he was getting up for the day, so he was being really active.  He was walking around searching for bamboo to snack on and was climbing on the trees and everything.  Soo cute!

Entrance to the Taipei Zoo

Panda doing his thing, snacking on snacks

Another awesome part of the trip was when we visited the natural sulfur springs.  Getting to the springs is really easy, just jump on the train and in about 20 minutes, you're there!  You can go to a public spring, or go to any number of hotels and rent a private room with a hot tub for a few hours.  This was really relaxing and a nice break from running around all day.

Our sulfur springs hot tub

 

Something we noticed about Taipei that we thought was strange was the fact that there were no trash cans on the streets.  That might not sound strange, but the weird part was there was NO litter on the streets.  Not even after a Friday or Saturday night.  We saw people walking around eating and drinking, but could not figure out what they were doing with their trash.   

 

Signing off with a view of Taipei from a gondola ride at the zoo!

Shop Till You Drop

The use of English words in advertising and store names is common here.  Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes not.  I've also seen some interesting pieces of clothing with English words or phrases that don't quite translate (or don't make sense to me).  One time I saw a girl wearing a shirt with the word "Butter" on it.  I might think it's strange that someone is willing to wear a shirt with the word "butter" on it, but I'm also sure there are plenty of people walking around with odd Chinese character tattoos.  There's got to be more than one American showing off their sweet new ink, telling everyone it means "Lucky," until they run into someone who can read Chinese characters and find out it really means "monkey face," or something equally unfortunate.  But, back to the odd use of English words.

Here's the First Edition of Odd Store Names:

First up, a store named Salad.  The store offers leather purses and wallets and a small selection of clothing.  I've seen lots of people walking around with Salad purses, so I guess the store is popular.

 

 

Next, a store named Homeless.  There are several locations throughout Hong Kong.  It is a home goods store with lots of unique and cute things.

 



 

 

Red Bean Dessert might not be a strange name for a restaurant, but I wanted to talk about a popular dessert made out of (you guessed it) red beans.  It's some sort of custard mixed with mashed red beans.  There are several other types of desserts made with beans, but so far I've only tried this one (and it was pretty good).

 

 

 

Not pictured is a clothing store called Oops!  I saw it during my trip in May, but haven't gone inside to see what the clothes are like.

 

 

Signing off with something you might not seen everyday, my dinner (a roasted pigeon).