Day 5 - Back to Sydney

We had agreed the night before that we were going to show up in the shared breakfast hall in our bathrobes. So here I was, standing in my Cow PJs with the bathrobe on when Will walks out of the bathroom fully dressed. I chuck a tantrum saying he needs his bathrobe as well since we agreed on it.

We walk out in our bathrobe when Will has another change of heart. We decided that he should check out what people are wearing so we're not the only morons in our PJs. He gives me his robe before he walks to the dining hall and comes running back screaming everyone is fully dressed. We trip back into our room where he screams at me "WTH WERE U THINKING?!?!". ME? It was a Will and Grace decision, yet I get the blame??

We get dressed into our normal clothes and head back out for breakfast. This was a lovely country breakfast where you get slices of fresh country bread, cereals, fresh fruit salad etc. When we sat down, the waitress immediately came over to offer us freshly brewed tea and coffee. We ordered a pot of coffee to share and hit the food.

Vegemite on country grain toast

Fresh fruit

As I was waiting for my toast to cook, one of the woman on the table next to us walks to the toaster to put toast in, only to see our toast there. She sits back down to wait her turn. Because she was busying talking, another girl put her toast into the toaster when we took our toast out. When she found out, she stood there GLARING at the other girl, ready to stab her with a butter knife. Someone get her some toast already!!!

Ontop of the cereals, bread and fruit, they also offer a full english breakfast made to order. After we finished our toast, the waitress asks if we would like our hot breakfast now. Of course we did! We have a hangover woman!

GIMME MY BREAKFAST!

Will's

My breakfast with the lot

Perfect runny poached eggs

After breakfast, we head back to pack our stuff. I realised I had left our cheese and olives in the fridge in the dining room and ran back out to grab it. As I walk into the dining room, I see 2 guys wrestling the toaster with a pair of metal tongs to get their toast out. The waitress comes running out to offer to turn the toaster off. They turn around and go "No, we're alright thanks." and continue to jam the tongs into the toaster??????

I grab my stuff and run back so I didn't have to be a witness to the accident waiting to happen. We pack our stuff into the car and took a step back to see how much we've accumulated in the 5 days:

The backseat

The backseat from the other view

The boot

We jump into the car to head back into Sydney. Within 10mins of driving, Will screams "MAGGIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". Without another word said, he winds down the window and I take a photo. As I said, perfect partnership.


And no, I won't bother explaining as no one would really understand. Just accept that this was a big deal for us ;)

Another 5mins down the road, I spot a sign that says "award winning cupcakes". Before I could say another word, Will parks the car to let me out. Now that's being on the same level. I walk in and ummed and ahhed for ages before picking out some cupcakes to take home:

SMJ is happy with her cupcakes!

Clockwise: Double choc, Hummingbird, Lemon cream and Bailey's cupcake

Will starts screaming that we've been in the car for less than 20mins and I've made another purchase. I spotted a heap of other signs that point to fetes and markets along the way, but we both decided to give it a miss. That is until we saw the markets in Linden

Without even discussing, Will knew that we had to stop. We find parking and run towards the market. Within seconds of arriving, our camera goes off non-stop. We did laps around the market just taking photos until I found a really nice Jam place where I bought some Jam for research.







We eventually get tired and leave. The whole way back to Sydney, we're looking for a car wash to clean the dead bugs off the car.


Maybe it was the car wash, or the drive, but we were hungry again and hit KFC. This has got to be one of the worst KFC experiences I've been to. I think their air conditioning was broken, as it was about 35degrees in the restaurant. I was sweating just lining up, and going to their toilet to wash my hands, they ONLY had hot water. And I mean HOT WATER. The food was still good....


Will drops me off at home and helps me unload all my crap:

2/3 of my stuff

Some of the goodies I got

The crap Will shoved into my bags

I had a fantastic time on my trip away, which was quite surprising for me. I'm not much of a traveller within Australia, let alone within NSW. I'm sooooooo glad Will asked me along, I can't wait for the next road trip! I guess any holiday can be fantastic with the right people. Especially when Will and Grace goes on holidays! That beats any other holiday out there!

Day 22 - Shopping in Milano

I woke up feeling like crap. Wait, I didn't really wake up because I didn't sleep! Even at 6am in the morning, the air was muggy and sticky. To make things worse, I got an SMS from my dad early in the morning saying my Grandfather is very sick and my mum has flown back to China to see him. Fortunately, he's feeling much better now. But getting the news after a night of no sleep was a real blow to my mood. Although it was still quite hot, I can tell you, a freezing cold shower at 7:30am doesn't make you feel any better. I think I had hypothermia from that shower. I think this is the fastest we've ever gotten ready in the morning. We went downstairs for breakfast, and that is when we realised that this "breakfast" is worse than the "breakfast" we got at La Spezia. Atleast we got a fresh crossiant at La Spezia. This place was prepackaged "crossiants". Or some type of stale dough made into a horn shape. The coffee was also terrible. Not unexpected considering it came in one of those instant coffee machines.

After my slice of kraft single with unknown bread "breakfast", I gave up on the food altogether. We grabbed our stuff and headed off towards the train station. On the way, I discovered an asian grocery store! How I miss my asian food! I nice big bowl of steaming rice and even canned pickles would've made a better breakfast than what we just had. We found our way to the tourist office at the train station to see if there is a shopping outlet district we could go to. Fortunately, it was about a 15-20min walk from where we were.

With map in hand, we started exploring the streets of Milan when we stumbled upon a market. Half of the market is selling dodgy things like underwear and porn (which Moishii was very keen on buying), but the other half was full of fresh fruit and vegetables that just make your mouth water looking at it!!!

Fresh seafood

Octopus

Fresh juicy fruit and vegetables

Shallots and peaches at the front

How gorgeous are those cherry tomatoes??

One of the shop owners even posed for me!

Moishii's purchase

Details.....

We eventually found ourselves in the shopping district. And before we even did any shopping, we stopped at a bar for some espressos first. No coffee, no shop. Once we got our caffiene fix, we started hitting the shops. I was surprised at how little I bought. Most of the things on offer just didn't appeal to me, and those that did appeal to me. Well, I could easily buy them back in Sydney at about the same price if not cheaper. After about the 10th shop, Moishii suddenly whipped around and started screaming at me for not buying anything. And that I needed to buy something to make HIM feel better. WTF? I don't see him buying anything!

We walked around in the scorching heat, ducking into most shops that had air conditioning. We even ducked into some dodgy store that sold porn because they had a MASSIVE airconditioning unit. I don't care that I was standing infront of a stand of R+ DVDs that had pretty animals on it, when its 40degrees blazing sun out there, I'll do anything for airconditioning. And it was probably about now that I noticed that I was getting stalked by a homeless guy. He's been following me around for the past couple of shops and he was starting to freak me out. I grabbed Moishii and we stepped on it and ducked into a shop to hide. We lost the guy, but a few shops later he found me again. We eventually shook him off which made shopping alot more relaxing for me. Probably why I ended up buying a few things. I didn't pick up much except a really nice frilled woollen scarf (why are they selling this in summer????), a nice leather handbag amongst other things. It wasn't as big of a shopping spree as I expected, but I think my CC was thanking me for that.

When it was lunch time, we ducked into a fastfood pizza joint where I grabbed a slice of pizza and salad whlist enjoying the aircon. I had barely finished eating when Moishii starts screaming that we need to keep moving. I was enjoying the aircon! *sigh* We decided to keep walking around and around and around and no one really bought anything anyway. Now we're standing in the middle of the street, with the sun blearing down on us and I'm about to pass out from a heatstroke. We found a semi shady area and sat down to study the map. We were looking for some sort of entertainment. ANY sort of entertainment. We decided that we should go watch a movie, but we couldn't find a cinema! We ended up asking a complete stranger who directed us back towards the Duomo.

5min metro ride away, we arrive at the Duomo and eventually located the cinema. Harry Potter was on, but since Moishii hadn't seen any of the movies, he didn't want to watch that. We were both going to watch Hostel 2, but we ended up freaking ourselves out considering the shithole we're currently staying in. So we settled for "Vacancy" instead. I warned Moishii that its all going to be in Italian when he insists that it'll be in English with Italian subtitles, or Italian with english subtitles. Lo and behold, it was all in Italian and no subtitles. Not that we really cared at this point considering we were SITTING in an airconditioned place!!! Seat + air con = GOOD!

I know Vacany was supposed to be a horror, but with the whole thing happening in Italian, there was a few times where we almost burst out laughing. And just at the movie started getting scary, the lights came on. Its intermission time. Like wtf?? The only good thing about the cinemas in Italy is that the toilet is INSIDE the cinema. So there is no hike across the building for a toilet break.

The movie wasn't too bad considering it was in Italian, but I definitely won't be buying the DVD. Once the movie ended, the lights came on and the SWAT team came swooping in to kick people out. So much for our plan to stay til the end of the credits. We're practically ejected onto the boiling hot streets when we decided to duck into the Myer-like department store for more shopping. Next thing you know, Moishii has thrown himself onto the underwear rack and started grabbinig random D&G and amarni undies. Whilst he was going nuts on the underwear, I was trying to devise a scheme to steal all the male underwear posters. God those Italian guys are hot!!

A hundred or so euros later, we walked out of the shop with nothing to do. We looked at the Milan guidebooks again and concluded that yes, they're crap, and we made the right decision not to buy it. We didn't want to go back to the stinking hot hotel since there were no restaurants around there. We ended up at Ciao again, which is basically Italian fastfood. By "Italian fast food" I mean a fresh salad and fruit bar, a pasta and risotto bar where dishes are made to order and a carvery with slow braised Italian dishes amongst other things. I ended up getting a massive bowl of salad and pasta with really really fresh crusty hot bread. God this fast food is better than the stuff you find at Leichhardt! I was originally hoping for some risotto, but again, we were too early and they weren't going to cook until 6. By the time we had picked our alternate dishes, it would've been 6pm. Just goes to show how impatient we are.

We decided to head back to the hotel, not before Moishii buys random sunglasses off a guy on the street only to find out that he was ripped off. We also stopped at the local supermarket and loaded up on drinks and alcohol. We also did a quick dry run and timed ourselves how long it'll take us to walk from the bus stop to our hotel for tomorrow. Next thing you know, we ended up sloshing around the hotel room, bumping into each other to try and pack our luggage with a glass of wine each. I decided to let Moishii pack whilst I had a shower, which to my surprise, WE HAD HOT WATER!!! I started screaming from the shower that there is hot water and Moishii thought I was kidding. I had to keep screaming we had hot water until he believed me. However, by the time he jumped into the shower, there was barely any hot water for him. I reckon the hotel has a hot water system that is smaller than my bladder. Either way, with a glass of wine in one hand, we managed to get most of our things packed. We even rigged up a security system incase there was a reenactment from "Vacancy".

The rest of the night was spent on my laptop where I tried to backup the 50 gigs of photos I've taken so far before we went to bed for the night. It was actually cool enough to sleep, but an hour after lights out, I found my head down the toilet sick as a dog. I think I know why that tomato I had for lunch tasted funny...this is not a good start to Mykonos.

Hitting the markets and then Thai

One of the reasons I always look forward to my sister coming back from Singapore is because we both share a love for gourmet food. We love walking through organic markets and looking at home made jams and pies. Even though the prices are sometimes double what you would pay at the Flemington Markets, we don't mind paying a bit extra for the decadence. So the first thing she wanted to do on her trip back to Sydney this time, was to hit the local market at the Orange Grove public school. We didn't end up buying much (Well, 3 full size pies, infused oils and vinegars amongst other things....) , but we had a fantastic time which found us at Toby's Estate at Broadway enjoying the best coffee we've ever had.

Beautiful fresh organic tomatoes

Toby's Latte

Toby's Cappuccino

Whenever family comes from overseas to visit, the one who suffers the most is my mum. She spends the entire cooking and cleaning nonstop. She ends up catering for 17 people at a time. So to give her a break, we decided to eat out at our favourite Thai restaurant Chedi.

Chicken and Cashew with Chilli Jam

My nephew's all time favourite - Massamum Beef

Chicken Pad Thai

Salt and pepper squid

Red Duck Curry

Pork Pad See Ew

Grilled BBQ Pork

Grilled BBQ Chicken

Thai duck salad

After dinner, we decided to put up the xmas tree where the kids got to hang their own xmas ornament. And by "their own", I had their photos printed onto ceramic ornaments. One for each kid. They absolutely loved it! And I think this is a tradition that I'm going to try and keep it going each year. My sister has requested that I get ornaments done for each of the adults. I guess that will become our family tree.

Making the most of Good Food Month

Its Good Food Month and I have an excuse to go out and make a pig of myself! A bunch of us at work decided to do the "Lets do lunch" at Forty One located at Chifley Tower. We managed to book the second seating meaning we wouldn't be rushed out of the restaurant. To make things better, all the Managers were out of the office today, so we could really enjoy our lunch.

The service at Forty One was really good and attentive, but not overbearing. Drinks were offered the moment we sat down, and plates of warm and crusty sourdough bread rolls were brought out some olive oil. Now I've always been against dipping bread into olive oil. I just don't find it that tasty! Even all the gourmet olive oils at the Farmers Markets don't really cut it for me. Yes I can taste a HINT of the fruitiness/pepperiness etc etc, but it just didn't jump out at me. That is until today. The olive oil they served with the bread was like nothing I've ever had before. The fruitiness of the olive oil was unmistakable! I couldn't help myself but rip of chunks of crusty bread and dunking it into the olive oil and slowly savouring the taste!

Once we had settled in, our mains came out. For the Good Food Month, Forty one was offering a dish of Slow Cooked Ocean Trout, Sweet English Peas crushed with Prosciutto, Peccorino, Basil, Mint & Lemon.

This was unbelievable. It looked like a big slab of sashimi, but instead of the cold slipperiness I was expecting, it was warm and unbelievably melting in your mouth. All you had to do was nudge it with a knife, and it'll slide through the trout like soft butter. A nice squeeze of lemon juice went perfectly with this decadent fish. The peas had the fresh sweetness that you don't get from frozen peas and the potato cubes! Crispy and fluffy! I can't be good for you!

We also ordered a few sides of cooked spinach with flaked almonds and a green salad to share. After our meal, we ordered a few coffees and teas and relaxed before we had to go back to work. Since I had to stay back late at work last night, I ended up leaving on time even though I had a long lunch. I met up with a few friends and headed off to the Night Noodle Markets at Hyde Park for round 2.

We managed to score one of the last tables and immediately starting hitting the stands. Now I made the same mistake that I did last year. We were so early, we ended up getting the precooked cold food they had prepared earlier. The wind chill factor didn't help either. But we still had a few nice dishes to share. By the way, I'm trying out my brand spanking new lenses, so the photo quality ain't that great. I haven't fully gotten a hang of how to use it yet:

Cold and windy

Tom Yum Prawn Noodle Soup from Yai's

Thai stuff chicken wings from Sussex Thai

Prawn cakes with sweet chilli sauce from Sussex Thai

Salt and pepper calamari

Japanese Spicy pork fried rice with fried Dim Sims

We were surprisingly full by this stage and completely frozen from head to toe. We ended up giving our table to some late running friends and got out of there for something indoors.