Sydney Weekend

For Aaron's Christmas and Birthday present, I treated him to a weekend up in Sydney and two tickets to the Wallace and Gromit exhibition.

Guess which one he was most excited about.

Yes, he is a HUGE W+G fan. So much so, that on the plane to Sydney, he even whistled the theme tune happily. This is how excited he was.

He also did one of those jump and heel click thing when he first approached the exhibition center.

I kid you not. 

We flew up Friday night after work and arrived at our hotel Vibe.

Needless to say, since we're old and tired, we showered and hung out in our room.

Saturday was filled with alot of walking.

Sydney is a very walkable city, especially if you bring comfortable shoes!

In the morning, we headed down to the center of the city.

The infamous dome of QVB.

Gorgeous patterns abound.

Aaron by the spiral stairs.

Queen Victoria's still there.

Then.... the Wallace and Gromit exhibition.

We were the only adults without screaming children.

Mine was well behaved, even if he was very very excited!

Aaron outside Wallace's house

After the exhibition, we walked to our lunch.

I picked Sepia for our engagement celebration lunch and it did not disappoint.

We ate our 12 course meal over the span of 3 hours.

Here are some highlights:

Inside out sushi nigiri with ginger gel

Seared Benison with chocolate boudin noir and coconut yoghurt.

Yuzu ice cream with fresh pistachio, pomegranate and peach and rose water.

The cool thing was, we were not told what we were going to have. We were told to not cheat and not look at other tables. Thus, each course that came to us, was a complete wonder and surprise!

And since we were totally stuffed after the ginormous lunch, we went walking to Darling Harbour. Since Aaron had never been to a Madam Tussads, we went.

Wah wah, don't go to the Sydney one.

Then we headed to the Opera house because everyone HAS to have their photo taken at the Opera house.

The next day, we headed out to Surry Hills before any cute shops were opened but it was a nice walk nonetheless.

Some cool sights:

This poor cactus.
Someone was so concern for the cactus, they resorted to vandalism.

Then we had yum cha at Marigold in Chinatown which we HIGHLY recommend. Thanks to my friend Anna who told us about this 5th floor wonder.
That, is the infamous mango pancakes.
Yum.

Some one liked their Tofu Flower more.

Then, as we were walking to catch a ferry to Manly (which we didn't end up doing anyways), we bumped into one of my Otago friend. Sheer coincidence! It was awesome. We shopped and walked a bit together and then went our own ways. With not enough time to go to Manly, Aaron and I walked to Darlinghurst in search of Messina Gelati.

The walk was worth it.

If you go to Sydney, have some Messina.

In fact, have a 500ml tub. We finished it. Polished it.

I had the Blood Orange and Hellow Sailor (Grapefruit with Aperol).

Aaron had salted caramel.

All three, excellent.

We ended our trip in Sydney with an exhibition of Alexandra the Great.

Today is Labour day, so we did a bit of labour in the yard and then have been pottering around the house since. I even managed to finish a tank top:

 Oooo! Plus I went to Kinokuniya in Sydney and bought these two gems: