Exploring Sydney: Markets, Museums, and Delicious Morsels
We started our third day in Sydney with high hopes. Today was finally the day that we were going to go to the Royal Botanic Gardens! It was around 7:00 am when we ate breakfast and prepared for our trip, and head down to the street. Well, just like the day before, no sooner had we stepped outside than it began to rain in earnest. Thankfully, though, our luggage had finally arrived the evening before, so we were better prepared. I had an actual jacket to wear, and my umbrella!
Standing on the sidewalk, we were both frustrated and not sure what to do. A friendly pedestrian on her way to work asked if we needed some help. We asked her where we could find a coffee shop to hopefully ride out the rain — at least until the sky stopped its torrential downpour.
I’ll say it right now: Australians are super friendly. This woman could have just given us instructions and gone on with her life. But, since she knew of some coffee shops on her way, she walked us to a street in the Rocks that had a couple of cafes. We thanked her and then parted ways, ultimately deciding on Starbucks. As with other chains around the world, Starbucks offered different beverages than what you can get in the States — but I just wound up getting a chai latte. (They had a Lemon Bar Crème Frappuccino that sounded extremely amazing, but it was way too cold for frozen beverages!)
A Brief Jaunt Through the Botanic Garden
The rain finally let up, and so we decided to push through with our original plans and made our way to the Royal Botanic Garden. While Dan’s main desire to visit the garden stemmed from wanting to go bird watching, it was also nice to see some of the plant life. I was holding the camera so Dan could use his binoculars, so I was able to snap a few pictures. I did, of course, take several bird pictures, but I also tried to capture some of the beauty of the gardens.
Chinatown and Cider in the CBD
As we continued to walk through the Botanic Garden, the rain began to come down again in earnest. After an extremely frustrating situation where we had several Ubers cancel on us because they kept trying to pick us up from the wrong side of the road, we made our way to Chinatown and a place called Paddy’s Markets. Paddy’s was kind of like an indoor swap meet, with hundreds of stalls and vendors selling a wide variety of things, mostly souvenirs, for pretty cheap prices. On the floors above the market, there was a mall with an Asian-centric food court and some other things. After having a snack of takoyaki (octopus) and wandering around a little, we left the Market and crossed the street to explore a little more.
Australia has a long, complicated history in regard to race. For decades, the so-called “White Australia Policy” specifically kept out immigrants from closer Asian countries and only allowed in Europeans. However, this policy was instituted as a reaction to the number of Chinese immigrants already living in the country. Sydney’s large Chinatown has been in its present location south of Darling Harbour since approximately the 1920s. Today Australia is one of the most multi-cultural countries in the world, and increasingly tries to position itself as an integral part of Asia rather than a far-flung outpost of Europe, but immigration remains at the top of national hot-button issues.
We wandered further down the street and wound up (not unintentionally) at a place called the Cidery Bar & Kitchen in the CBD (central business district). As some of you may know, I really love cider, so this was a place I really wanted to check out. They had a plethora of different craft ciders from around Australia, along with beer and wine, and as we enjoyed some drinks, we also had a delicious ploughman’s platter with bread, cheese, and charcuterie.
The Australian Museum
The drizzle seemed to be unrelenting, so we ditched our plans to visit the Chinese Friendship Garden and headed to the Australian Museum. The oldest museum in Australia, the Australian Museum has a wide variety of collections including several full dinosaur skeletons, taxidermy animals, gemstones, and cultural collections honoring Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander cultures, to name a few. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a natural history museum, so I was really excited to see that several of the dinosaur displays now include dinosaurs with feathers.
The First Nations collections and exhibits were also very interesting and informative. Unlike the United States, Australia has done a lot of work to make up for the atrocities that were committed against their Aboriginal peoples — but they also don’t shy away from telling the stories of what these people suffered. The exhibits don’t just delve into the sordid past of Australian treatment of its First Nation peoples, though. It also celebrated the different cultures, with a focus on the cultures of the Pacific, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Dessert First
When we were researching for our trip, I wanted to try some unique places to eat. I came across Koi Dessert Bar, a cake shop with a restaurant upstairs that serves a 5-course dessert tasting. (They also serve a dinner tasting menu, but come on. Who wants to eat dinner at a cake shop?!) The desserts were all delectable, and not too small. I feel like we really got our money’s worth. I think my favorite was a dessert they called the “Blackhole,” which had a hazelnut and barley cream covered in caramelized milk chocolate that the waitress melted by pouring warm yuzu caramel over the top. Needless to say, everything we tried was delicious.
After dessert, we went back to the hotel for a few pints and dinner, which was a pizza topped with kangaroo and emu. It was my first time trying both of those, and they were very tasty.
Our third night in Sydney was also the first night of State of Origin, an annual best-of-three rugby match between Queensland and New South Wales. The hotel bar was packed with locals watching the game. We enjoyed our pizza, a few pints, and some rugby before heading upstairs to call it a night. Despite the rain derailing our itinerary, we had a great day and were looking forward to our next adventure: the Blue Mountains!
