sydney take #2

I'm back on the road (or rather... in the sky). This past week I've been in Sydney again. This time the trip is a bit longer - at least until the end of next week. Unfortunately some of the equipment I need to use has been playing up, so the project is a bit behind. Hence Sydney might be graced with my presence even longer than expected!

Work this time around is out at Parramatta, but the hotel I'm staying in is in the CBD. So I've been catching the train out to work. The nice thing is there are plenty of express trains; strangely though the express trains don't seem to go as fast as express trains in Melbourne. (Nothing beats a 280km/h train trip in Japan though!)

Once back in Sydney, I couldn't resist heading back to Captain Torres for another batch of pan-fried flounder : ) This time I tried some Portuguese beers, which were very nice. For the home-brew enthusiasts the Portuguese beer even had the original gravity listed on the back label. (Gravity is the measure of the density of unfermented beer). My phone is fixed now, so I've uploaded photo's of various beers for the beer competition, such as the one below:

Wednesday night I had the worst Thai meal ever! I was wandering around the city looking for dinner, and found a place that looked good. What should have alerted me to the fact that it wasn't good at all, was the large bain-marie at the back of the restaurant. When I asked for the menu I was told there is none, you just pick your meal out from the bain-marie. Suspiciously all the meals were in take away containers... Being naïve I thought maybe this was just for take-away customers, so I asked for the Pad Thai. The waitress opened a take away container of Pad Thai and emptied it on to a plate for me. It was the worst tasting meal ever!! I gave up after a couple of mouthfuls, and went back to the hotel.

The French Open is on at the moment, and even better the hotel has "Fox Sports 2" in every room. Fox Sports has 24 hour coverage of the open : ) There is also a "sports" bar in the hotel, with a couple of big TV screens. After my Thai horror dinner, I retired to the sports bar to have a better meal, a local beer, and to watch Marat Safin bomb out of the open in the second round.

Tomorrow I'll head to The Rocks and Circular Quay and check out the famous sights (and pubs) of Sydney.

eating locally

Despite not being overseas, I emulated an overseas trip this week by eating at not one, not two, but three Spanish restaurants. It turned out I was staying in the "Spanish Quarter" of Sydney. All three of these restaurants were within 50 metres of my hotel! If I was staying longer, I believe there were more just around the corner too.

Monday night: Don Quixote. A huge meal! Roast suckling pig - awesome stuff. A clear path to my heart via my stomach. This was a traditional meal from the Madrid region in the middle of Spain. It was followed up with a "Spanish Coffee", which was a strong espresso with some kind of liquor and cream.

Tuesday night: My non-Spanish night. Counter meal at a pub with Mark. Tandoori Pizza - a dish of confused origins!!

Wednesday night: Miro Tapas Bar. I thought I might have a few dishes, but after two I was full! Firstly, fried white bait, followed by chilli mushrooms. They served some beer from Barcelona called Estrella Damm; it was really nice. I had to consume two : )

Thursday night: Captain Torres. Named after Torres who was the first European to sail thought the straits between PNG & Australia - hence Torres Straits. Anyway, this was a restaurant upstairs and tapas bar downstairs. I was going to have tapas again, and sat at the bar. The barman however convinced me to have a meal at the bar, he told me the fried flounder was way better than the baby octopus that was on my mind. I suspect he was right too, the flounder was excellent! This place also served Spanish beers. I didn't recognise (and can't remember now anyway) the towns in which they were brewed. First I had an Ambar, which could be the brand, or the type of brew - it did taste like an amber ale. The second one was Estrella Cerveza Especial, which wasn't as good as Esrtella Damm from the previous night.

Hence this caps off my week of Spanish culinary delights. Work went well too! We were able to finish 2 days ahead of schedule, even after fixing a few problems along the way. My phone died during some testing which is annoying. I took some photos of beers for the beer challenge, but now they are stuck on my broken phone. *grumbles*

I've started mapping my travels on travellerspoint.com/member_map.cfm. It's not too interesting yet, but it'll grow!