Molluscs & Museum

This morning we walked via Darling Harbour (the area where our apartment is) to Sydney Fish Market. This is the biggest fish market in the Southern hemisphere and the 3rd largest in the world (after Tokyo & Mexico City). It was amazing - the range and quality of the fish and seafood was fantastic. There were also lots of places to eat there - we could happily have stayed all day and eaten our way through the menus (but we'd have needed to triple our daily budget to do it!). It was a far cry from the last fish market we went to back in Chau Doc, Vietnam - this one was not stinky and looked as clean as a fish market can (so no need for you to worry this time, Seth!). It was quite early when we went but the food looked so good that we stayed for a brunch snack - I had soft shell crab sushi and it was divine. On the way to the market we saw an Australian white ibis bird scavenging in a bin - shows the adaptability of this normally wetland bird...

This afternoon we went to the Australian Museum, walking via "Hyde Park" and St Marys Cathedral to get there. The museum was dated in parts (think: stuffed animals arranged in seemingly random fashion) but had some interesting bits, including a collection of minerals & semi-precious stones donated by a local collector (more interesting than it sounds!), natural history of Australia and a few dinosaurs (which were Solana's favourites). There was also a section on the social history of Australia, that was a bit of an education for me in terms of the extent of the divide between the indigenous Aboriginal people and the white settlers (which sounded not dissimilar to S.Africa in the days of apartheid in the mid-1900s...).

On the way back to our apartment we went for happy hour sunset cocktails at one of the many bars on Darling Harbour and soaked up some of the evening atmosphere of the area that is our home for this week.Read more