Mardi Gras, dragonboats and coastal beach walk!

Finally it's Friday and I was craving dumplings after chatting with Ying. I know nothing will be as good as her mom's dumplings but I went to Chinese Noodle House in Haymarket. This is in the Lonely Planet guide as the best dumplings in town so I went to try their dumplings out. For $8 you can have 16 boiled dumplings and overall it's not bad.
The weather in Sydney was fantastic for Saturday and we had previously made plans to watch the Dragonboat races at Darling Harbor. After a filling dim-sum lunch, we were slightly disappointed by the very short and unexciting races. However it was also the Mardi Gras parade that night which is the equivalent of the Toronto gay pride parade. The only thing is that it was at nighttime so most of my pictures of the float did not show up well but the crowds that showed up to watch it was impressive. Sunday I tackled the Bondi to Congee coastal beach walk. Despite the tsunami warnings and beach closures, there were heaps of people at the beach. Good thing there wasn't a real tsunami! The walk is 6km one way and along these nice paths which is very easy to stroll along. It goes past Bondi Beach, through to Bronte and ends at Coogee. As you can appreciate, the weather was not as nice as Saturday and right at the end of the walk, the rain started coming down. Talk about perfect timing!

Bondi beach

Bronte beach

Coogee beach

Cairns and the Reef

My family is in town this week because of Chinese New Year so it was heeps of good food. My cousins, my brother and I went to Hurricanes Grill and Bar Steakhouse at Bondi and the portions were massive. This is a plate of pork and lamb ribs with a baked potato for $32.
After which, my family went up to Cairns for the weekend. We visited the Outer Barrier Reef and went on a cruise. The winds were quite strong so I didn't do much snorkelling but because of the facilities on the tour, we still saw some of the reef and fishes!
What do you do when your city doesn't have access to a beach?? well.. you can build one! Cairns have a man-made lagoon, with a little sandy beach on the other side of this pool.

Seafood was superb in Cairns, so we went to this restaurant Splash and the food was fantastic. This was their chilled seafood platter with oysters, scallops and gulf prawns and bugs. We also had Reef fish with noodles and green curry and also Mahi Mahi with lychee risotto.

For Sunday we went on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, travelled up via the train to the rainforest and down via the cablecar. We went past the Barron Falls.

and then we checked out Birdworld at Kuranda. The birds are free to fly around and they perched onto my brother and dad's shoulder. This is my favorite bird of all, a little night owl.

Gong Hei Fat Choy

and Happy Valentine's day as well! The roses and flowers in the Royal Botanical Gardens are beautiful this weekend despite the weather
The one thing that's nice about the Royal Botanical Garden is that it's in the city and it's peaceful within the grounds. It reminds me of High Park in New York City.

Part of what's great about Sydney is the many restaurants around. Friday, we decided to try Korean and went to this restaurant Haemil at Circular Quay. The bibimbab was fantastic and there are definitely other dishes on the menu that I would love to try.
Finally, my folks are in from HongKong and Vancouver so will be spending sometime with them this week. I will hopefully be travelling with them a bit and be able to blog about my time with them next week and the Chinese New Year goodies :)

The best sashimi ever

Went to the Sydney fish market this morning with Catherine and had the best lunch there ever. This is similar to the Tokyo fish market except that it's in a smaller scale. The most awesome part was for $26, we got all this salmon, kingfish and tuna sashimi with soy sauce and chopsticks. The fish was so fresh!
There's other types of fish you can get as well. This is the John Dori fish, funny looking fish with the one dot in the middle.
If only I can make congee, they sell these fish heads and bones that would make wonderful congee. Unfortunately for me, I can't eat that much congee and my congee never turns out that great, more resembling soggy rice than true congee.
Afterwards we went back into the city and went for dessert at Passionflower, which is a Chinese style dessert place. This is the dessert that I shared with my friend, it has taro, coconut, durian and jackfruit ice-cream with little coconut gelatin cubes and chinese dumplings. It was such a massive dessert that we couldn't quite finish.

Dessert heaven

Rainy day in Sydney and it's the perfect setting for some shopping in Chatswood mall, followed by dessert in Adriano Zumbo cafe in Belmain. It is the # 1 on Sydney's top 10 patisseries on Sydney's Time out list. The dark hot chocolate from this cafe is different from Lindt hot chocolate, this is more intense chocolate and less milky. I have to say I do like Lindt hot chocolate better, but this is pretty good too.
This is called "The Younger Years" which is chocolate fondant cake, raspsberry coulis, vanilla anglais (which is the syringe) and vanilla bean icecream. It is usually with peanut butter gelato. however we like it better with the vanilla bean since it is less heavy. Don't get me wrong, it is a pretty decadent dessert. Definitely worth going to!

Right next to it is the Cupcake Factory. I am not a cupcake fan, but one day I will have to do blog on cupcakes as it seems to be the rage in Sydney with 3 different cupcake stores!

Down the road is the Adriano Zumbo patisserie which serves interesting pastries and also meringues. I did buy a few meringues for dessert later..