Sandwich Heaven

I finally got a chance to check out Big Bite on Pitt, a highly recommended sandwich shop in the city. I have been looking for an opportunity and every time I passed by at lunchtime, there was a massive line-up out of the door. So finally I got a bit smarter and went early. I had the smoked salmon on brown bread with rockets and tomatoes inside. The sandwich was almost the same size of my laptop and it was an awesome sandwich with definitely fresh bread and well-balanced flavours. It was well worth the $9 and will require a long walk down to the library and a workout session tonight!

How many pictures can you take of a rock?

This past weekend was ANZAC weekend, which means a long weekend and another trip to a famous Australia icon, Ayers Rock or Uluru.

This trip was planned 2 months ago and it was initially meant to be a trip with Adventure tours. However 1 week prior, the company found out that they booked us on the wrong tour, so we had a different itinerary sent to us. Thank goodness I booked the trip through a travel agent, so Micheal worked extremely to make sure that our trip was rebooked to my satisfaction. It would have been fine if everything went according to plans, however our plane got diverted to Alice Springs because of a crack in the windshield! So we got to Uluru late, which unfortunately meant we missed out on the Kata Tjuta tour.

However all things considered it was a fantastic trip. Because of the rebooking, we got to stay at the Outback Pioneer Hotel instead of camping. First night we did the sunset tour at Uluru, and for dinner I had the Outback burger, which consists of beef, pineapple, fried egg, bacon, tomato and the thing that makes it truly an Aussie burger --> Beetroot. It was a pretty good combination but I had a hard time putting it all in my mouth at one go!

Sunset at Uluru

The next day was a 5am start to King's Canyon. It's a 3 hour drive away and a 3 hour hike. The hike started with the "Cardiac hill" which really is only 500 stairs up. Apparently it's called Cardiac hill because you get a cardiac workout from it. After that we walked around the rim of the Canyon. The scenery was fantastic and the weather was perfect, warm with a bit of wind and perfectly blue skies.

King's Canyon

We got back in time for the Sound of Silence Dinner. It is a dinner set out in the National park between Uluru and Kata-Tjuta and we got to appreciate both of them in the sunset. They had a buffet dinner set out for us, with 5 salads, 4 different main courses and 4 desserts. The best was the lamb, followed by Kangaroo fillet. The crocodile salad was good as well. The best dessert was the warm apple crumble as it was starting to cool off after the sun went down. A neat part of the dinner was the astronomy class as the skies were completely clear to appreciate the stars.

Sunset with Kata Tjuta at the background

Feast!

Sunrise at Uluru, my favourite part of the trip

Food glorious food..

For those who love food as much as I do, you'll be in heaven. This week is a pure food blog week. After 2 weekends of travelling, I'm ready for a bit of a relaxing weekend in Sydney. If it is possible to do absolutely nothing in one weekend i have mastered that skill.

Friday I ventured down to Menya Noodle Bar. This place is touted to have some of Sydney's best ramen noodles. I looked at the menu and didn't feel like burning my tongue on 3 chilli's worth of Dragon ramen (although that's what they are famous for) so I had Kimchi with beef ramen which was rated one chili. The noodles were definitely well made, chewy and fresh with the appropriate amount of spiciness. For Fiona I like this better than Ajisen Ramen hands down, sorry :p
Saturday I decided to try out the local fare, ie kangaroo meat. You can get it at Coles for $5 for quite a bit. I split it into two, bought $1.5 worth of veggies and had a fantastic meal. Granted that it might not exactly be how the restaurants make their kangaroo meal for $35 but i had an awesome meal. Because kangaroo meat is so lean, people recommend cooking it rare to medium rare. However I think I will probably cook it longer next time, I'm not too sure whether my roo had stopped hopping yet when I served it on my plate :p
Sunday Cat and i went to Sydney Seafood School at the Sydney fish Market and took a 4 hour class on Seafood BBQ. It started at 11am and went on for 4 hours. During this time we had a 2 hour demonstration on how to prepare the squid, prawns, mussels, garfish and kingfish, plus also on how to tell when the seafood is fresh or not. The dishes we were taught to make were BBQ shrimp, BBQ squid on Thai salad, BBQ vegetable salad, Kingfish with wasabi mayonnaise, Garfish with parmasean cheese crust over a rocket salad, and mussels in garlic butter. Then we moved on to cooking in a group of 6. We prepared 6 dishes and promptly demolished it all. I forgot to take pictures of the dishes that we prepared seeing how hungry we were at 2:30pm. With the course they provided white wine to be paired with the meal and gave us a cooler bag each to bring home with 2 different sauces, chocolate and crackers. It was a lot of fun with all the dishes being straight forward and easy to prepare. I can definitely see myself replicating the recipes with the limited seafood that I'll have access to in Ontario. In May we are doing the sushi and sashami course with them, can't wait!

The teaching auditorium at Sydney Seafood School

The fantastic kitchen they have for us to cook at!

Leftover squid salad

All that is left at the end of the day, remnant of the tail of the garfish, 2 mussels' shell and the skin of the king fish.. sorry

Great Ocean Road and the Grampians

This week on the last minute spur I decided to go down to the Great Ocean Road in Melbourne. I wanted to enjoy the scenery instead of worrying about driving off the cliff so I decided to take a a tour. The road was winding and the tour guide was long winded, but the scenery was amazing.

The only spot with the official sign on it

The Twelve Apostles, or rather the Eight Apostles

The London Bridge with the funny embarrassing story of the cheating couple stranded on the far side of the bridge and their infidelity was broadcasted on national TV.

The other part of the trip included a tour to the Grampians which is 5 sandstone mountain national park in Southern part of Victoria. There is an Aboriginal center with wild kangaroos and emus around the park. Now all I need is to see koalas in the wild!

MacKenzie Falls

Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow outside the Balconies, Grampians

Finally, meeting up with Scotty, Meg and Baby G is the best part of the weekend. They graciously accommodated me on the last minute visit and we had a great time hanging out.

delish brunch at Alimentari: bacon, avocado with cilantro with a poached egg to top it off

Tassie Devils and other creatures!

Easter was spent in Tasmania travelling around the East coast of the island. 6 days of traveling is very hard to show but I've picked some of the better pictures to show some of the beauty of Tasmania!

First day was spent at Launceston. This is the second biggest town in Tasmania and the Cataract Gorge is the highlight of the town. It is only 30 minutes walk from town center so it was nice to go for some short hikes and get myself getting used to doing some "bushwalking"

Cataract Gorge

The next day was spent hiking through Cradle Mountain. It is part of Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area and probably the most popular tourist spot. There are multiple options of hikes and I just did a day tour which is around 5 hours of hiking with a tour group. However the ultimate hiking tour would be the 6 day OverlandTrack where they spend 6 days in the bush trekking with all their gear! I saw a few people at the start of the trek with HUGE back packs. Part of being a protected area also means that there were a few animals wandering around including a wallaby and a wombat with its cub!Momma Wombat and child

View of Cradle Mountain from the top of Marion Lookout

View of Cradle Mountain and Dove Lake

Wild Wallaby at the park

After Cradle Mountain, I joined up with a group with Adventure tours for 3 days to go down the East coast. It was a truly a United Nation group of people with 2 Danes, 2 Germans, 1 Swiss, 1 Portuguese, 1 Belgium, 2 Canadians and 2 Koreans. Our tour guide Matt was fantastic and the group dynamics was perfect for a fun time. There were spontaneous dancing and singing with the guitar and interesting activities such as squid-fishing. Without a doubt, it was the people that made the tour fun but the scenery was pretty impressive as well. Places we went to include the Bay of Fires beaches, Freycinet Peninsula, Port Arthur and random places such as Spikey Bridge and Pirate Bay. Matt entertained us with the history and stories behind the sites and we also visited a conservation area with Tasmanian Devils, kangaroos and wallabies. What a fabulous time!

Bay of Fires

Wineglass Bay, Freycinet Pennisula

Tasmanian Devils! They look cute and cuddly but would not want to have those teeth biting on me!

Kangaroo and Wallabies (we got close enough to pet them)

The tour group