Day 3 and 4 Sydney: Bondi Beach, Opera House and Sydney Bridge

Phew, finally some time to resume blogging. We are having major problems with hot water pipes-having it burst 3 times! Over the weekend, we took the plunge and decided to go with solar hot water instead-to save us some electricity and get good plumbing work done. The initial cost is high but we will save in the long run and help the environment as well. Imagine our horror when we came back from Sydney and found the pipes burst again!

Anyway, Day 3 and 4 of our trip is when the fun begins.
We departed from Castle Hill at around 10am and went straight to Bondi Beach. I'm a big market fan so we headed to Bondi Beach Weekend markets straight away. I got a bargain beach dress for $35- fantastic material as well. With these sorts of design- we will be looking at around $50 and above in Perth shopping centres.



The beach. There is something about water that is so calming....


Ok-this is the real reason why we are here. We are looking for this shop.


In this little fish and chip shop, the world first fried Mars bar is sold.


Waited for about 20 mins for our order.


Finally, the sinful treat has arrived. We waited another 5 mins before it cooled.



I told myself that despite this high calorie, fat ladden dessert... i'm going to have a few bites just to see what the fuss is about. The soft melting caramel inside with crisp fritter outside is the killer combi. It's nice but I don't think I can finish one by myself.


Later at night, we met up with a friend we haven't seen for a few years. We were supposed to meet in Darling Harbour Lindt Cafe but it closed really early (6pm). Finally decided to head to this Ice and Slice place in Newtown which serves fab gelato desserts.


This was the Poached pear slices with pistachio and vanilla bean ice-cream. The pistachio Gelato was full of flavor. I wouldn't mind having that one by itself.


Similar to chocolate affogato from KoKo black- hot chocolate with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. It's ok but the hot chocolate is obviously from syrup and not the "real thing".



Fast forward to day 4 of the trip.

I can't get enough of the Opera house and the bridge!



Just beautiful.

We headed to Sydney Fish Markets. Decided quickly that we want to eat at Peters just because their seafood looked fresher that day.



Sashimi-can't complain much. It's ok.


Seafood platter for 3. We couldn't finish the lot. I surrendered first. RR looked at me shocked... I'm sure the guys could have finished it but we needed to rush back for RR's flight back to Melbourne. The oysters were terrific and so were the fried fish, prawns, chilli calamari and mussels. The grilled fish wasn't anything to shout about-in fact it was dry and tasteless.



After sending RR off, AR and I took a long walk to Sydney for a walk. No shopping done. Just walking, talking and enjoying what's around us.

Before that we walked into Queen Victoria Building (QVB). What a grand building this is. We headed to the 4th floor to look at the figures and replicates of tiaras and crowns.

Finally the sun is setting and we took a slow walk to circular quay.

We went in search for Pancakes on the Rocks. After looking at a few maps, we found it.


For some reason I wasn't too hungry. We ordered Monte Cristo to share. Chicken and Ham crepes and topped with chilli sour cream sauce. Surprisingly the chilli sour cream did give us a spicy kick!


Mr AR wanted an entree so we had the oven toasted pesto and pine nuts bread. We actually regretted ordering this. Although it was nice, I just didn't have the appetite to finish the food!



For dessert, we took the "Hot and Troppo". Buttermilk pancakes with walnuts, chocolate sauce, banana and chocolate ice-cream. This was fantastic. The pancakes were fluffy and they were generous with nuts and sauce. If we didn't order the bread, we could have finished the dessert I'm sure.


We haven't gone out for a date in months. It's really rare to have some time for us. Our busy schedule means we don't often get to talk. You know. A real chat. I think we stayed at Pancakes at the Rocks for nearly 2 hours just chatting and laughing away. It wasn't too busy and the waitress there were pretty good at topping our glasses of water and leaving us to have a good time talking despite it being so obvious that we finished our meal already. That's a huge bonus I think.

It's scary sometimes knowing that we are just dating and we don't even have time for each other. This was a special time for us. Just talking and it was not about work or anything else. Just our dreams and plans for the future.

So we took a 2 hr stroll back to the hotel again. Usually that walk would have taken us 30 mins but my poor feet was suffering from 2 really really bad blisters hence each step was agonizing. This is what happen when you forget to pack proper shoes and slippers.

If you are wondering how many kms we walked that day... we counted. It was approximately 20kms+++++ not including walks around some centers and the long stroll along Martin Place + the walk from darling harbor to fish markets.



I'm hoping that means I worked out the bites of fried mars bar, seafood platter and the sinful looking pancakes.... =)

Next post- A day full of chocolates!