nacken travel blog
Sunday, October 19, 2003
So, we are back save and sound in rainy Suva.
The trip was ok .. after waking up and making apple-pancakes with butterscotch sauce for Ritsu, we finished up packing and left for the airport. Checkin, waiting, boarding plane, no problems ... on the flight were some scary 15 minutes of pretty massive turbulences, but we arrived in Nadi on time. We rushed to get to the domestic counter to see if we can get on an earlier flight to Suva, and we got lucky ... well, sort of ... all the flights were totally delayed ... our flight was supposed to fly at 8:15 PM (from what I understand it departed then at 9:30) ... so, we indeed got on an earlier flight, the 6:30, which left at 8 .. so .. this was a good thing ...
Since it was raining and very windy, we had a pretty scary roller coaster ride ... but the landing itself then was very smooth. Luggage was all accounted for and we took a taxi home.
The fiji adventure now continues on nacken.blogspot.com
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Day #7, Saturday
Finally we could sleep in and I made pancakes for Ritsu for breakfast. Then we took the train to get to South Bank where we picked up some handcrafted earrings which I had ordered earlier in the week and to enjoy the arts and crafts market, which was very nice. We then slowly walked back to the city and did some final shopping ... for the first time in months I got to buy a CD. Michael Bublé, a canadian guy who tries to be, just like Harry Connick Jr. and Robbie Williams, to be the next Frank Sinatra reincarnation, and he is pretty good at that. I heard some of the songs in various record stores over the speakers and every time I found my self either singing or swinging along.
For lunch we treated us to our long time favorite Subway Roast Beef sandwich, seems the australians have a slightly different idea about roast beef, but it was still very nice. Here a nice view of the Queen Street Mall, up and down:
Some more shopping (another batch of marked down cook books for me) and then we returned to the hotel to start packing and just relaxing a bit and the getting ready to go out for dinner for which I had made reservations (or as they call it here "booking") at Restaurant Two (they really do not have it with names here). This was the closest we got on this trip to a New York fine dining experience. The place is great, but don't count on a great view, even though it is close to the river and the botanic garden. What you see is mainly parked cars. But the food was all around delicious. Appetizers were a half dozen of Coffin Bay Oysters and 6 seared scallops around a bundle of angel hair pasta tinted with squid ink (which tastes salty and fishy ... and leaves your lips from time to time quite black, so, don't order this one when you are working on impressing a date). And then Ritsu had fresh baramundi (a white fish) and I had the asian duck. Both impeccable and extremely yummy. There were some nice items on the desert menu (the cheese selection alone was great), but there was simply no space left.
2 things we would have loved to have known before and I want to ad about this restaurant: They have a special 38$ three course lunch menu which looked very nice, and they have a Digestive tasting thingie on monday-thursday evenings which has 8 courses for 95$, and if you feel like you can have a different wine with each (only a small tasting glass) for 40$ extra. If we had been to that place earlier, we would have come back a second time in that week.
We took a nice digestive stroll along the waterfront back to the hotel and happy and full we went to bed.
Friday, October 17, 2003
Today we did a wine tour organized by Cork'n Fork. And we had a fantastic time. We were picked up by Peter (he and his wife Judi are running the tour) in his 21 year old Holden, a beautiful classic car, and he brought us to Carunga, where Judi waited with the small van, as she had picked up 3 other people from the coastal hotels. So we were a small group of 5 which made it much more comfortable. We checked out 4 wineries: O'Reilys, Albert River, Heritage and Cedar Creek. As a bonus we went to "the smallest, legally operated distillery" and it was very interesting. They produce all kinds of spirits and liquors there, using fresh produce from their garden trees. They also have a beautiful peacock prancing around. Lunch was also great, at the beautiful Heritage winery. Choice was Steak, Fish or Chicken/Ceasar Salad, and it was all of great quality (not cheapo fish'n chips). And desert was an absolute evil "Sticky Date Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce" (Recipe 1, Recipe 2). The Cedar Creek Estate is a very beautiful place with a pond for wild ducks, the staff was very nice albeit a bit overworked (seems in the afternoon more groups come by).
Peter took us then back to Brisbane and this great wine tour was over. I highly recommend this tour to anyone who visits the Gold Coast or Brisbane and is somewhat interested in wine (one in our group was actually a non-drinker, he was just very interested to see the places and enjoy the atmosphere.)
After getting back, I went to the post office and then to a bottle shop I had been before, where I found a bottle of Cachaca, and the owner said he would get more for me. He recognized me right away, very nice guy, we chatted a bit, at one point while he had to run into the backroom he said "grab a beer and open it and open it, open one for me too!" ... this was pretty funny. So we chatted some more about wines and exotic spirits (gladly not about rugby of which I have no idea) while sipping a nice Becks beer.
Back to the hotel and leaving for some more shopping. Friday nights the shops stay open a bit longer and Queen Street Mall is very crowded with afterwork drinking people, late shoppers and people getting ready for the weekend. I tried to go online, but the signal phased in an out. For dinner we went to our favorite Sushi place, which this time was very crowded, and we nearly got seated together with a group of 5 young men, who appeared to have already partied a bit, they were loud and rude and we quickly asked for different seats. Those 5 were later shown the door as they found it funny to pick food from the passing plates (instead of taking the plate). Sushi was great again, this time I even asked for some sea-urchin (uni) and even that was very tasty.
We walked back home and went to bed right away.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
But anywhooo .. I had the great chance to watch Kill Bill: Vol1 here, right now, first show on Australian opening day ... I am wondering when Fiji will get it. Funny actually, as in many cases Fiji seems to get stuff far earlier than AU ... often only a week after US release ... in this Fiji really rocks ...
Anyways ... this film ROCKS .. it rocks so hard that I want and watch it again RIGHT NOW ... and i may actually do so .. but maybe I will just wait and go see it with Ritsu tonight ...
I know that this will not be a film for everyone .. it is very much a film for geekish film lovers .. I wonder actually how the female 'romance movie' crowd will like the film ... the screening I attended was 95% male audience ... but then again it is not you regular guy-action-movie ... first of all it is a huge display of women empowerment ... and being a Q.T. movie .. it just IS smarter .. looks VERY beautiful ... plays with chronology ... has an animated segment ... and the soundtrack is very very good (need to go look for CD now)
Very glad that once in a while there are movies that make me fall in love with "the movies" in general again ...
After that I did some shopping and for dinner we boarded the CityCat and went to Brett's Warf.
That was unfortunatelly only the beginning of yet another dinner odyssy, as it turned out that the restaurant there was allegedly fully booked out and there was no way they could squeeze us in, we probably looked to touristy and they did not want to give us their emergency table. So we had a fun ride back, taking in the City Lights (click for video clip) and went to Southbank and tried the turkish restaurant Ahmet's there ... Not sure how authentic the food is, but the setting was nice and the food very tasty (and lots of it) ... service unfortunately was very slow. When after a long wait our waitress showed up, she was very nice .. it just took way too long.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Day #4, Wednesday
So, I went to get my annual roller coaster fix to Warner Brother Movie World, which is about 45 minutes to the south of Brisbane. Thanks to Australian Day Tours, for 79AUD I was picked up from the Hotel and also got the admission ticket ... Ride was smooth, I even dozed off, not much to see on the way.
We arrived quite early, 15 minutes before the ticket offices opened ... after that another wait of 10 minutes to get into the park .. and then another 15 till they opened the barrier on main street. It was actually fun that today they were filming the opening, having a director around (Steve Stevenson?) .. but then again, maybe this was just another elaborate trick to make the day feel more special.
Compared to american theme parks, this one was much smaller. Had fewer rides, actually 'only' 3 rollercoasters. I compared it later to the Sushi situation we face ... much better than in Fiji, but not great compared to the US :)
I think I did pretty much all rides, some of them twice. Notable was the new "Scooby Doo" coaster, a fun indoor ride. Not super high, but some fun twists. One of them being that you first ride pretty much on the bottom level through a hounted house setup, then the car stops, facing the wall, and you realize you are on an elevator, which brings the car upstairs in a slight s-curve movement. And out the car goes BACKwards! yeah .. a fun drop and then up again and then the car is turned and the actual roller coaster ride begins, in a fairly dark / disco light environment, with the scooby doo song blaring all over.
I really enjoyed the water log ride, which somehow felt taller than others i know ... it too employs that "going backward" trick at some point. I shot some video, which I will put up later.
The main coaster "Lethel Weapon" reminds me a lot of the "Batman" ride back in New Jersey, but it rattles a lot and I hurt my shoulders on the harnesses ... but still fun. The last coaster is something Road Runner themed and very smooth. Not really high and no scary drop though.
I actually visited some of the shows: Marvin the Martion and the 3rd Dimension, one of the first CGI 3D movies I recall having read about and always wanted to see ... it was actually a lot of fun, it does still have the hand-drawn touch of classic cell animation, but looks great and is very entertaining for the 15 minutes or so .. the 3D effects are 'right in your face' so that even the lil' ones get the idea.
There was a bat attack show on main street which started out as a dance number by Poison Ivy and her gang and then some fight between the good ones (Bat, Rob and B-Girl) and bad ones (Freeze, with a schwarzeneggerish accent, Poison Ivy and Catwoman) ... no question who one, but Robin was made to be such a sissy ... fun.
While the Police Academy movies are long time gone (and will hopefully NOT ever revived), the Stunt show based on this movie series is hilarious and highly entertaining.
Some last thoughts? Bring sunscreen and a hat ... australian sun is cruel .. going alone as a 36 year old man is kinda weird. People treat you like a dad who lost his family or like a paedophile. Waiting in line alone is not much fun either ... Tip for lunch: there is a bakery on main street that has "normal" sandwiches ... I wish i had found that place earlier ... every other place wants at least 10$ for some greasy looking combo plate. What is really nice compared to US parks: 2 of the restaurants where actually selling beer (for the bored dads ... i spotted some of them)
Later I heard from our bus driver that Dreamworld (5 minutes away) probably has more rides. Well, I will try that one next time then.
Dinner was a bit chaotic. First we wanted to take the ferry to Brett's Wharf, but realized that we are already a bit late and decided to check out the restaurants around riverside. We then decided that we liked "Fish Restaurant" so much that we wanted to go again. Too bad that they had JUST changed their menu (different from 2 days ago). All the items that we remembered as "wanna try next" were gone, prices were up, and no waitress came to see us for 10 minutes .. so we left .. getting more tired and more hungry. As we approached the japanese Restaurant we thought about trying, Ritsu realized that she left her handbag at the Fish Restaurant, which gave me some unexpected evening workout, sprinting back to ensure it is still there (with all the money and credit cards) ... turns out that the new couple sitting at the table had not even noticed the bag.
Tired and my foot hurting like hell, we ended up going to Sushi Station again, and it was very nice again. Though it was a bit late, few people, thus less new stuff on the train, we knew what to order this time around and had some great stuff. We really enjoy their squid-ball yakitori. And their salmon is very tasty too.
So, as for the rest of Tuesday, Day #3 of the Brisbane Chronicles:
I had a kebab for lunch, not very turkish, but very yummy. They have developed kebab making into a well greased production process, similar to "Subways" sandwiches. I returned to the hotel, taking pictures of all those colorful boxes below:
And now, what may that be? According to some article I somewhat read (half), these are the traffic light control boxes (thus one on each street corner) and they had the fab idea to have local artists paint them. Pretty neat idea, much better than the regular grey ... in some cases the artists tried to find some connection to the location, like the lady with the shopping car is close to a supermarket ... I saw one which tried to blend it in with the marble of the building in the back, but that looked just weird.
I left the hotel again right away to try a new mode of transportation, the ferries! There are several different ones. Smaller, slower boats for the river crossings and more short distance travel, and then there is the "CityCat" ... a fairly fast thing, which only does express stops. So first I took a smaller one to get to Southbank again, and here is a little 1 minute video clip of that trip, nice pics of the skyline, and visual proof that it is not always sunny there. On my way back I too the CityCat and noticed the speed difference .. very nice.
Back at the hotel at 4 PM and the room was not made up yet ... grrrr ... So I went out to find a closer supermarket and returned aroung 5 and Ritsu came at 5:12 PM ... and the cleaning people finally came at 5:30 ... yeah ...
We the headed to another sushi place called "Sushi Station" ... why all those kaiten sushi places need a train reference ??? Well .. if some place needs it .. it is this one ... food does not go around on a conveyor belt ... but on a large model train!!! ... which causes an interesting dilemma ... at other places you keep a constant eye on the belt, to not miss anything that might be of interest ... in this case .. once the train is gone, it takes about 2 minutes until it passes you again .. which gives extra time to conversation, but can be frustrating if you are really hungry ... but then again, just ask the sushi chef and tell him what you want ... We had: Tuna, Snapper, Salmon, Ikura, Scallop and Unagi Nigiri Sushi, Fishball and Chicken Yakitori, and Inari. Very nice, so .. we plan an going back .. the waitress was a bit puzzled when we asked for those little bowls to put your soy sauce in ... i mean .. that we even had to ask was weird ...
We then headed again to Southbank to the theatre and enjoyed the Musical "Sweeny Todd" .. quite well done, eyecandy, interesting story ... some semi plotholes I still try to figure out ... But for us it was a marvolous treat ..
Trip back home was the fast CityCat ferry, this time a first for Ritsu .. she enjoyed it a lot. We are planning a longer trip on that boat .. maybe tomorrow night to go for dinner.
As a little goodnight thing: Here is the moon over Storey Bridge, just a few hours ago .
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Today is not that sunny, feels even a bit fresh.
Last night we went to Oshin, according to Brisbane's Citysearch Website the "must go" place for japanese food. We had scallop yakitori (skewers), Buto no Kakuni (pork cubes), mixed sashimi and the some tuna and salmon roe sushi. While it was better than Sushi Train (which should not be too hard), we have yet to find the one place we want to go to several times (Like "Makoto" back in Sydney). We also found it a bit pricy (Sushi between 6.60 and 8.80 AUD). But we had a good time. Afterwards we tried one of the very cool features of our hotel: The rooftop spa! They also have a sauna and a BBQ up there, but we have not tried those. Relaxing in warm bubbling water and taking in the Brisbane skyline (though only from the 8th floor) is a really nice thing.
Tired, but just not tired enough, I enjoyed something that I can hardly do in Fiji: zapping through TV channels (with that one channel we have in Fiji, it is not that much fun) ... and I actually stopped at something that I would never have watched back in the USA: The Jerry Springer Show !!! It was quite entertaining, especially wondering what the Australian viewers must think about Americans when watching that. Actually surprising that a show like Springer is shown elsewhere in the world .... but they also show Ricki Lake.
And this is what it looks like when I am hanging out at the Q Street Mall (in this case at "Pig'N Whistle") and use the online connection. Pics taken with my iSight cam.
Monday, October 13, 2003
Brisbane Day #2 - Monday
Woke up around 9, made breakfast for Ritsu and around 10 AM we left to explore the city. First stop was the local and nearby Apple Centre, but I behaved and did not buy anything.
Again we walked through the Queen Street Mall and went further, passing the Casino, over a bridge and we were at the part of the city called South Bank, where the huge Performing Art Centre, home of the Queensland Opera resides (among other things) and we bought tickets for a performance of "Sweeny Todd" for tomorrow. We then walked down the beautiful riverside, passing a beautiful Nepalese Temple, a very beautiful artificial beach/pool thing, which on a monday morning was pretty empty, mainly moms with their toddlers, a deserted IMAX theater (closed a year ago, lack of audience) and lots of nice shops. Initially we wanted to take a ferry, but we felt good and took another bridge back and ended up in the Botanical Garden.
Above:Nepalese Tempel, Articicial beach with Brisbane skyline, beautiful purple growth, panoramic shot(click for larger version), waterside of the botanical garden, nice bauhaus-like highrise, chinatown
There is also a Quicktime VR clip of the panoramic shot.
After walking through the beautiful gardens we crossed the city again (me checking out some computer shops on the way, while Ritsu checked shoes) and went to the central station, hopped on a train, got off next stop, and we were in Chinatown (which is around Brunswick Street/ Wickham Street). Idea was to have lunch at "The Vietnamese Restaurant". (After having been to the "Fish Restaurant" last night, one wonders how creative the people here are when they name their eateries).
The food was great: Mini Spring rolls in a size that you wonder how monstrous then the Maxi's must be, a special duck dish, which was with 16AUD a bit more expensive than other dishes .. but it was also quit big in size. The pork spare ribs we ordered were actually a bit too much then, we were full.
A stroll through chinatown then, checking out a nice asian supermarket. Then walking all the way back to the hotel.
And right now I am sitting again in a cafe on Queen Street (after shopping for some discount books) and enjoy the free, albeit slow wireless internet connection. I actually got a reply from the people behind the project and they confirmed that the service is indeed restricted to ports 80 and 442 which means that I can only check websites, too bad, would be great to run the webcam from here. They also seem to have some funky cache setup, I cannot really reload my own blog.
Brisbane Day #1 - Sunday
We arrived at 10:30 AM at Brisbane international after a 4 hour flight from Nadi. Flight was good, no problems at all, food was soso breakfast, seats where crap in the middle, it felt a bit hot, but nothing that could dampen our mood.
After Duty Free, Immigrations and Customs, we hopped on the "Airtrain" which takes you for 7.50AUD p.p. in 20 minutes to Central Station, which is very close to our hotel. Check-in worked fine too, even though we showed up 2 hours before check-in time. The Rothbury is a complex of small 1 - 2 bedroom apartments and our's is very nice and comfy. We settled in and then went to find the main shopping district, the Queen Street Mall: a stretch of street-turned-pedestrain-area with a bazillion of shops and department stores. For food we found a sushi fast-food place and then we did some initial supermarket shopping. We both noticed the super-friendly atmosphere and attitude of the people. While Sydney may remind one more of a mix of NYC and LA, Brisbane is more like Miami. Nice warm climate, lots of outdoor eating places and friendly people. Sure we were in awe with the huge book stores and shopping opportunities in general. We later spent quite some time at a Dymock's bookstore and ended up buying reading material worth 90 AUD (among that, 2 cookbooks for me :)
We left for a fairly early dinner (then again, most restaurants close around 9:30 PM, so you better go early) to the riverside, eagle street, where we picked 'the fish restaurant' for dinner. Very nice place, great seafood. Oysters for me and salt and pepper squid for Ritsu as starters, We both then enjoyed the local critter specialty, the Moreton Bay Bug. A crustacean that flavorwise is somewhere between lobster and crab and fairly easy to eat. I had them BBQ style and Ritsu had just one half over garlic creamed Linguini (which unfortunately could have been a bit warmer). Food, Service and the bottle of 2002 Yalumba Chardonnay were very nice.
Above: Highrises, neighborhood Japanese place next to Apple Centre, Map, Ritsu enjoying the huge variety of books, us checking out Moreton Bay Bugs.
Sunday, October 12, 2003
G'day mates and greetings from sunny Brisbane! We arrived save and sound, we had to get up very early and so I am pretty tired now ... We already managed to have some Sushi at Sushi Train, which is a Kaiten Sushi chain ... not the best sushi in the world, but sure better than the stuff in Fiji.
What is really cool that the main shopping zone, the Queen Street Mall, has all over wireless internet coverage. So, i sit here outside and type and do not pay a cent. It feels though that it is a bit restricted. Websites only .. so, i still need to figure out how to upload pictures.
More later.
Friday, June 20, 2003
So, we are back in Suva
But how much fun we had flying back ... flight left pretty much on time .. our great "exit row" seats were not that great .. not really much more legroom, and our seats would not recline ... weird people and loud kids on board ... food was ok .. better than average actually ... fish or chicken was the big question again ...
But the big fun started arriving in Nausori, the airport close to Suva. In Sydney we had stocked up on all kinds of nice food items and japanese ingredients which are not available in Fiji. Knowing that customs regulations on food are tough, we stayed away from stuff that is not sealed in, like fresh fruit, meat and such ... so .. we felt ok answering the question on the customs form with "we have no food with us" ... i mean ... a sauce mix to make Thai Tom Yum soup can hardly be called food ... or dried seaweed.
But as luck has it, customs felt inclined that night to check each and every suitcase ... and they were not that mad about finding "food" but more that we did not declare that we had food items with us ... so ... they went through everything, tried to figure out what is what (which with most of the japanese stuff was a challange) .. they talked about confiscating everything and punish us with a huge fine (I kept recalling that headline in the newspaper, when some tourist lady was fined 1000FJ$ for bringing in 3 apples) ... but I tried to talk to the people, explaining that this stuff is not dangerous, that we did not know and such .. and they came around ... in the end the only wanted to confiscate 3 items ... and i could talk them even out of 2 more of those .. but in the end they took all the rice we brought (yes, we do have rice in Fiji, but Ritsu is very picky about rice and wanted to bring this special japanese rice) ... I was really surprised about some of the stuff they let us keep though (Natto, pickled Ginger..) ... and I also had a little too much liquor on us (the 2 bottles of wine that we brought from the Hunter Valley e.g.), but that was ok too.
Well .. in the end we got through quite well ... just such a shame about the rice!
We took a cab back home and everything seems fine and the cat is very happy to see us ...
from now on the adventure continues on the nacken fiji experience
Quick blog greetings from the Sydney International Airport, where they have some free internet terminals ... The catch? No chairs, and the height is so that I either have to hurt my back, or if I try to sit, it is too far up.
In some hours we will be on our flight back to Suva.
Thursday was yet another sunshiny day in good old Sydney, and we took a stroll down to Circular Quay and hopped on the ferry to Manly ... I bet there is some great story behind the name "Manly Beach" ... but I do not know it.
The trip is nice, 30 minutes on a comfortable seaworthy vessel, 22AU$ buys a roundtrip for 2 people. And the great view of Sydney's skyline is worth the admission alone.
Once we arrived at Manly Wharf we walked down the promenade to the beach. Lined with a variety of shops and tourist traps and a really cool news agency (a shop selling all kinds of newspapers). At some point I heard one of my all-time favorite tunes: "MacArthur Park" ... and it was played by the New South Wales police band .. how cool ... they were playing some more later, with one of the uniformed ladies singing ...
The beach was pretty empty, but considering the temperature we were surprised to find people in the water ... surfers and suicidal children.
We did not stay too long, without the bathing fun the Manly Beach experience is basically restricted to walking up and down the 2 store-lined sides of the main stretch. And who really wants to pay 45AU$ for a Billabong T-Shirt???
So, we took the 12:45PM ferry back and went to The Rocks for some Pizza ... last sunday we saw a nice place there and we found it again, a small, very italian pizza place by the name of "Zia Pina". We shared a small pizza with onion, pepperoni, anchovies, olives and cheese and a small portion of "Tortelini alla crema" ... and I was very happy to find a very decent priced bottle of italian Soave in the southern hemisphere.
After lunch we ran a couple of errands, minor shopping and then back to the hotel for a break. For our last dinner we returned to the ideal source of fresh Sushi: Makoto ... we managed to go there 3 times in just one week. This time we just had to wait 20 minutes .. this place seems to always attract a crowd ... it also seems to not have any bathroom facilities ... But the food was great again!
Thursday, June 19, 2003
How about a little movieclip while we are waiting for the next update?
Today we took a ferry to Manly Beach ... photos later ... but enjoy the beautiful vista right away.
Wednesday: We headed over to the Powerhouse Museum, which was quite interesting. We especially enjoyed an exhibit on "Tokyo Fruit", a magazine on weird, wacky Tokyo fashion. Other than that, the museum focuses on 'power' related things like all kinds of transportation, steam engines, weird planes ... it has areas full of experiments and robotics (one robotic display is especially fun, the robot arm dances to different styles of music, transforming accordingly, e.g. holding a disco-mirror ball when doing 70ies disco). We also visited the exhibits on ecological households and chinatown in sydney.
After 3 hours we were cultured out and went to chinatown for lunch ... we found out that the Thai place we just had been 4 days ago already closed down to be taken over by some other chinese place ... We found a nice, big Dim Sum place (which here is called Yum Cha) and had some great duck, pork buns and seafood dumplings ..
For dinner we finally went to that place that allegedly has the best chicken wings in Sydney (legend has it that they had a "hooters bar" .. but that closed a while ago) .. Arizona Bar at Pitt Street Mall (very close to a monorail station)
Our waitress was a bit helpless and could barely answer simple question like "how many wings are on that appetizer platter?" (she said 5, turned out to be 8) ... so .. we ordered the wings and a 'tower' of ribs ... the wings turned out too sweet, and since blondie, our waitress, ignored me, I went to the kitchen and consulted the chef about hot sauces ... he first gave me Tabasco ... but came back later with what he called, real Louisiana Hot Sauce ... and all that helped the wings and the ribs a lot ...
So, if you ever go there, ask for extra hot sauce ... otherwise you get honey sweet wings ... the size of the wings was actually very nice, the beer was cold .. the place itself was surprisingly empty ... After trying to wash away the sauce from our faces we strolled back to the hotel.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
live blog greetings from the powerhouse museum ... too bad I am sitting on a very very old iMac (hey, at least a mac) and I am surrounded by hordes of annoying schoolkids !!!
Happy 1st Anniversary to us! ... Yes ... already a year since we got married, so Tuesday we celebrated a bit.
First we took a nice stroll along Darling Harbor to get to the Sydney Fishmarket, where we pigged out on super fresh seafood.
24 Oysters (17.80AU$), half kilo of prawns (shrimp, 10AU$) and a piece of BBQ swordfish ... that went all down well with a nice bottle of Chardonnay. We sat outside, chased away the seagulls and watched the pelicans swimming around. Great place to overdose on sea-based proteins.
We walked all the way back, this time taking the pedestrian bridge that crosses Darling Harbor and ending up right in the heart of the CBD (Central Business District) and of course we had to do some more shopping. I got 2 nice shirts, and Ritsu a great pair of pants. We then walked to the hotel and took a nap.
For dinner I had secretly made reservations at the Forty One Restaurant, which is located on the 41st floor of the Chifly Plaza building and is in general a great dining experience ... It reminded me a lot of windows on the world/wild blue on the 107th floor of the WTC, when it was still around.
We selected the tasting menu which was fantastic ... I think the whole menu is on the website .. so I just highlight some stuff ... besides the items on the menu, we were treated to some extras: amuse bouche was oysters in vietnamese dressing and goat cheese tartlets ... between the 2 main courses we had a small cauliflower soup (in an espresso cup, just like we had at Union Pacific back in NY), which was a bit salty, and before desert we had some extra raspberry sherbet.
The 2 appetizers were nice, the fish entrée was slightly underwhelming, when the lamb arrived we were already pretty full, but the lamb was great. Followed by a trio of cheeses and then desert ... we could have selected each one desert ... or together a whole variety plate of all deserts ... that was just overkill!!! but very nice, imagine a goat cheese cheese cake! It was a bit too lemon-y .. but the distinct, but faint goat flavor made it very interesting.
Did I mention that this place has a great view? Most of it is to the west ... but we were later shown the party rooms, and the best room has also a view to the north and you can see the opera house (looks small from high up) ... but as the waiter confirmed later, the best view of the city is from the restrooms! .. You can watch the city while peeing ... how cool is that?
We walked all the way home and now we are trying to recover from all that food .. (for some weird reason I am craving more chocolate now ... somebody come and pump my stomach out ... )
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Monday was a bit more mellow ... we slept in a bit, then started the day with a super tasty cheese and wine breakfast .. which caused use to sleep some more .. until noon :)
We then got ready to do some shopping around Pitt Street Mall and we considered visiting the Skytower Observation Platform. The latter was discarded when we saw the lines there. Shopping fell also a bit short, as the sheer amount of shops was just overwhelming. We checked out a place that we heard good things about in terms of chicken wings, the Arizona Bar, but it turns out they are closed on Mondays ... so, I went back to the hotel while Ritsu did some more shopping.
For dinner we went back to the kaiten sushi place we liked a lot: Makoto. And this time we brought our own beer :)
While waiting for a seat (this time only 10 minutes), we saw again something that had us worried and puzzled for some time now .. the fashion of wearing very low low cut pants that on a bar stool (see picture 3 / top) creates the disturbing image of showing the ass-crack around! ... Amazingly this fashion is being followed to 90% by people who thanks to tummy volume should NOT show their mid rift ... but they still do and think even it is sexy ... well .. low cut pants with short tops ... and then having a tummy like mine is NOT what I consider eyecandy ... Ritsu and I keep having some good laughs wehn we see some chick's lovehandles wobble over the side, or the undies become visible ...
Anyways, back to food ... again it was very nice, especially the Uni. We skipped Ikura, since the only plate on the conveyor belt looked like it had been there for hours now ... It seems they had pre-prepared a bit too much and they stacked up plates behind the counter ... at some point the manager guy just yelled "stop making more stuff" ...
We had a great time, good sushi and a good laugh thanks to ass-crack girl, and the total of 27AU$ (well, manager guy forgot to count one plate :) was very ok ... My recommendation: go, go early, bring beer, beware who may be taking pictures of you and may post them on the internet.
Monday, June 16, 2003
Sunday was a day for a very special and educational tour: Visiting the vineyards and wineries of the Hunter Valley. Short Summary: Awesome and highly recommended!
We booked the tour with Visitours in advance and at 7:45 AM we were picked up by Steven, our driver for the day and a nice comfy 10 seater Mercedes Van. Since we were the first we could pick ideal seats and enjoyed a small tour through downtown Sydney picking up the other people. But soon we were on our way up the Pacific Highway listening to Steven's very entertaining lecture on Australian History, Wines and whatnot. We had a quick stop at a typical OZ road place (of course occupied by McDonalds and Boston Market) ... and around 10:30 we reached our first winery: Iron-Gate
Located in a beautiful hacienda-style building, we all grouped along a fancy marble bar and Roger, the owner, gave us 7 wines to taste, of which we both enjoyed a 2002 Chardonnay the best (and bought a bottle) but also their 2002 Shiraz was very nice. We also got a tour of the wine making fascility.
And off to watering whole #2: Audrey Wilkinson. (Audrey was actually a guy, and to make it even more weird, he never drank wine ... he just tasted it and spit it out :). Here we sampled another 6 or so wines, and left with a bottle of their 2000 Shiraz ... but that time we noticed already that Shiraz in Reds and Chardonnays (aged in Oak barrels, unlike some new ones which are unwooded) in whites were our favorites.
3rd stop was lunch at a place called Oscar's Cafe, which was part of a somewhat touristy looking 'village' which had several eateries and souvenir shops. We settled for a really tasty salmon/caper/red onion/avocado sandwich.
Next winery was a bit different, as Steven pointed out, the McDonald under the wineries (in the way they do the tastings): McGuigan's. They are obviously prepared for bigger groups and it was a bit impersonal, but fun was that the first Chardonnay we tried was a bottle I bought 2 weeks ago in Fiji. So, we skipped the cheap exports and went for more serious stuff. Most was nice, but nothing interested us enough to buy it (I just found a bottle-shop ad in the paper, offering the McGuigan's Black Label Chardonnay for 5.95 AU$ per bottle if you buy a dozen, at the winery it would have been around 20AU$). But the adjacent cheese factory saw some of our money: While the free tasting was equally 'conveyor belt' mentality, and the young lady helping us was in bitch mode, the cheeses were great and we got 3 of them for a forthcoming cheese and wine evening we will have here. There was also a Fudge Factory, but time was running out.
We had one more place to go: Capercaillie. While not having the fanciest building, inside they had in addition to wines also lots of arts and pottery and crafts. But we sampled their wines anyway. All 4 whites we tried were very very nice (even the Traminer, which usually is too sweet for me). We only bought the Chardonnay though. Their Shiraz was ok, and they have a nice white port, which again was sweet, but lighter than red ports. This having been the last vinery, we started our return trip. Everyone was pretty tired and exhausted from drinking wine all day, Steven put in "Austin Powers 2" for us to watch, and so we made our way back to the city ... the setting sun painted everything golden, and half the bus was dozing off while the other half was watching.
Even with the sunday evening return traffic getting stronger, we got back just fine and by 6:30 PM we were in our hotel room again. I can highly recommend this tour, Steven has been a fantastic tour guide and save driver. I like the concept of a smaller group (we had seen several busses that would seat 60+ people) so we can move quicker from place to place and it also feels more family style ... the group around us were all young people and were all great travel buddies.
When Steven dropped us off, he also had some good dinner suggestions, so after a little break we walked down Oxford Street (a pretty interesting albeit scuzzy looking area) and found many nice places, ending up at "Saigon Bay", a vietnamese place, where he had spring rolls, Bun Xaoh (a spicy noodle dish) and spicy/sour beef thing (with onion, pineapple and bellpeppers, in a tamarind/chili sauce.
Sunday, June 15, 2003
Saturday a bit more in detail:
First of all, we both slept very very well. Noise does not really seem to be a problem, but then again, it is weekend. Wait for monday. But at least no rooster. The calm humming of the AC-turned-heater also covers lots of the traffic noise.
For breakfast I made tea, Yoghurt with strawberries and banana and then english muffins.
I quickly went to the closest Internet Cafe to do the first update, but their machines were so crappy that it took me a while to get anything done .. downloading email was out of the question. Really need to find a way to use my own computer.
Back to the hotel and off we went to Paddy's market, which is basically in the basement of the Market City Mall. It is a like a street market with a section for veggies and seafood and such, but the bigger part has stalls selling 10$-sunglasses, hats, cheap clothing (but most with brand names :), some electronics, wigs, lingerie (!), souvenirs, mainly a lot of crap but also some good finds.
Above at market city we discovered that the big chinese supermarket Thai Kee has a fantastic selection of japanese food as well, so we shopped until we dropped, some things were just too good to be true to find them, and many items were temptingly cheap ... e.g. rolls of papertowels (for some reason quite expensive in Fiji) ... but we realized that this may become a volume problem. I was very happy to have found my favorite japanese Pizza chips, but now they also had okonomiyaki flavor, have not tried that one though. With 120AU$ less in our pockets (well, off my credit card) and 5 full bags we made our way back. Realizing that our tummies were growling AND that we cannot get thai food in Fiji, we had lunch at a thai place and it was very nice.
Once we returned to the hotel we rested only for a short time. More to explore. We walked north through Hyde Park, Ritsu loved those birds with the superlong beaks, and after a 30 minute march we arrived at the opera house. Always a stunning sight, especially on a sunny day when the sun reflects in the 'sails' and of course also the combined vista of the opera house and the harbor bridge ... after walking around there we walked to Circular Kay, the main hub for all ferries, and we continued to "The Rocks" ... the older part of Sydney where the first settlers lived. They had a nice, fancy crafts market, with lots of sophisticated and expensive dust-collectors to buy. I was very fond of 2 food stalls, one making their own hot sauces in all kinds of different flavors and degrees of hotness and the other had self made jams, one being "Lemon, Passion-fruit and Butter" ... I was able to taste that and it was pure evil ... so good.
We then started walking south again, loosely the direction of the hotel, since our feet started hurting, thus on the way I stopped to buy a pair of sneakers (was on the shoppinglist for AU anyway) and from then on walking was a bit better. We found the huge Kinokuniya bookstore, but unlike the one in New York, this one had a bigger selection of chinese and english books than japanese books it seems. It was still very impressive.
We came by lots more stores on the way back, but behaved very well and finally reached the hotel where we chilled out for a while.
For dinner we went to a close by kaiten sushi place called "Makoto", where we actually had to wait outside for about 20 minutes before we got seated. (nice touch was that the manager brought all the waiting people hot tea, since it was quite chilly out there). The place seems to be quite popular and it turned out to be very yummy. Bummer was that they did not serve beer, as we keep learning now, most places are BYO = bring your own, funny thing. The sushi was great, we had Uni (seaurchin), Unagi (eel), Ikura, Maguro, some kind of snapper, makarel ... i like that about kaiten sushi places, that you can so easily just pick what you want.
Full and happy we returned to the hotel and after some TV we fell asleep.
Saturday, June 14, 2003
Today, Saturday, after I made breakfast, we walked around till our feet hurt: Paddy's Market, Lunch at a Thai place, back to the hotel, walking through hide park towards the Opera House, then over to the Rocks, where a crafts market was going on and then all the way back to the hotel, we are now about to have lunch at yet another Sushi place, but stopped by a cyber place which seems to be in Korean hand, judging from the mainly korean keyboards ...
here some pics.
So, we made it. We are in Sydney now and when you read this, this means I have also found a place from where to update my blog. I have seen many many internet cafes, but I have yet to find one where I can either hook up my TiBook or I can use a CDR and actually upload stuff.
The trip was quite pleasant. At 7 AM on Friday Ramesh, our favorite taxi-driver picked us up and drove us to Nausori airport. We were early so no line for check in. But then the major first screw up. I have lived under the impression that the "Australian Business Access Card" I have, which is valid till 2006 and says "This Person has permission to travel to AU on multiple occasions ... " is my ETA (electronic visa to enter the AU) ... and some part of me still believes so .. but I need to figure out what that card is and HOW I ever got that ... well .. anyways ... this ETA is a funny thing .. On prior trips to AU, my travel agent would take care of that, no extra charge. On my second trip I even totally forgot about it and that confirmed my thought that this magic business access card must be working. Well, nowadays you can do the ETA for 20AU$ online (13US$), or for 50FJ$ (25US$) at AirPacific's travel centre. Since I had to do now a "rush" application, they felt free to charge me 100FJ$ (50US$) for that ... thank you AirPathetic !!! If I ever find out that this was unnecessary, I will go and kick some butt. And get my 100FJ$ back.
We had nice seats very much at the end of the plane, but that was ok ... initial fears that this means we are fed last were eased when we they started feeding us right out of the kitchen ... and hello what a nice surprise: Not only did they come buy several times for drink refills, the food we got was actually very good. I think that was the first time we both finished it: grilled fish with veggies and potatoes and a tomato sauce with olive slices. The flavor was great and compared to the crap they tried to serve us on our flight from Nadi to LA, that was gourmet food ... the tray also had way more little things to play with .. a salad, crackers and cheese, breadroll ... it is not about being hungry ... it is all about killing time and what funny things you can create with those items.
Movie time: The movie they screened was "Catch me if you can" which I had already seen. So I got out the computer and selected "The Transporter" ... a nice mindless action movie which I do not feel like reviewing in detail (only that I think it was missing a scene that was very prominent in the trailer, the one where the guy deflects a missile with a tray or something, and that it ended way to abruptly, I would really have loved to know why that Asian chick was in that bag to begin with) ... it helped me pass time in a nice way while Ritsu was sleeping.
Since we were sitting very close to the only lavatories, pretty much everybody on the plane passed by and looked at the computer screen... then looked up to compare how small the plane's TV screens are ...
We landed in Sydney on time, and after duty free shopping and immigration, we had another surprise when I exchanged money ... gosh the US$ has gone down in value ... earlier I was able to get close to 400AU$ for 200AU$ ... now I only received 270AU$ or so ... wow ... that makes us rethink certain aspects of our shopping behavior here.
We then took the train to the city and found our hotel just fine (only to find out that the next train station would have been way closer!)
The "new york style studio apartment" is exactly that: small ... but very very nice .. clean, actually a bit bigger than my first apartment in Manhattan. It seems it can get a bit loud as it faces a busy intersection, so they supply you with earplugs! Nice touch. We did not stay long and took our first stroll towards the city center, looking for food. Surprisingly we passed 3 kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi places and picked the last one to have some food ... probably not the best, but it was nice and at 28.50 AU$ (20US$) fairly cheap. We kept walking and then did some shopping at the downstairs woolworth supermarket (since our room has a neat kitchenette) and then returned to the hotel.
We took a little break and got very sleepy, so we kicked ourselves to get up and explore some more. We went to "Market City" a big mall-like complex, but since they were about to close, we just skimmed through the shops to see what there is. Then we crossed the street to Chinatown, where on Friday nights they have a "night market", lots of stands selling crap (like "Scarfs from Korea") .. well .. the usual street market stuff, sunglasses, 'real' gucci bags, brick-a-brack, one place had actually anime VCDs. And of course many food stalls, mainly things on skewers, chicken, baby octopus and fishballs: easy to eat and even easier to poke someone's eye out when eating while walking. The restaurants had tables outside (though after sunset the temperature went down quite some, we had already started freezing a bit in our room and got pity-smiles when we asked for "can we turn the heating on") and offered 15AU$ per head dinners.
We did not feel like chinese and kept looking around and came by a great japanese Izakaya place called "Fujiya" ... quite big, but very nice and we got a great table for 2 (other couples we saw coming in ended up at one edge of those looong group tables .. then again, maybe they wanted to hide me .. I noticed later that caucasians were a 3% or so minority there:) We had all nice delicacies, like Takoyaki (Fried octopus balls, poor octopus!) and dumplings, and a tasty fish called "Hokke" and some chicken gristle .. don't even want to know what exactly that was .. but rule of thumb: "if you fry it long enough, it will all taste good" ... like heads and tails of shrimps for example.) With that we enjoyed some "Choheis" ... those are made of some fruit juice and then Shotsu is added .. this is like japanese whiskey. I tried green apple and peach flavor (the first I drank just like lemonade) and Ritsu had one in Umeshu (plum wine) flavor, which was a bit stronger than mine.
Happily fed and tired we walked back home and went to bed pretty much right away. (The hotel people had actually figured out how to reverse the AC from cold to heat, so by now it was nice and toasty in our room)
Thursday, June 12, 2003
G'day mates and welcome back to the nacken travel blog.
This time we are taking a 5 hour flight over to Sydney, Australia ... from Fiji this is kinda like "a neighborhood trip" ... though I hear that actually for fijians it is more tricky as they need to go through a tougher visa procedure...
Should be a very interesting trip. And if all goes well I will be able to update this blog on a regular basis ... thanks to wireless hotspots, that should be fairly easy.
Sunday, May 11, 2003
3 Weeks passed really fast and now it is time to return to Fiji, back to our house and cat, also back to 75% humidity, pouring rain and a very questionable internet connection.
Things are all packed, I ended up buying yet another small suitcase since we ran out of space. In an hour Berna and Chris are coming by to pick us up and then off we go to the airport ... 6 hours to LA, then a 5 hour layover, then 11 hours to Nadi, short layover, prop plane 40 minutes to Suva, then a 1 hour cabride .. and we will be back home ...
Our ongoing Fiji adventure will be chronicled on the nacken fiji experience.
And THIS blog will become active again once we travel again.
Saturday, May 10, 2003
Busy days as we are preparing to go back to Fiji, running lots of last minute errands, and murphey's law of course made lots of things happen just to make sure we do not get bored .. thus I am still pasting together yesterday's fress-fest picture (hamburgers and then seafood ... pic will be up in a bit) and the written update
But tonight's Sushi feast is right here (YES, this is were the VIDEOclip is) . We were so buffed out .. though we planned to attend a musical gig of a friend, we could only muster up to go to East Sushi for that fun conveyor belt sushi .. the white tuna, which is usually a specialty there, was a bit on the chewy side ... but the unagi, ikura and everything else was great ... unfortunatelly there was a bunch of very loud, drunk, chinese people entertaining each other ... but they were loaded enough to leave soon ...
Friday, May 09, 2003
Thursday I went downtown to meet Berna .. and I was able to take a closer look at the ex-World Trade Center area ... it is just breathtaking ... this hole were those 2 huge towers used to be .. to be able to see Century 21 from the world financial center ..
For lunch we went to have Burgers at Jackson Hole .. very nice ... way too much food .. but the beef was perfectly done (we both like medium-rare, so our burgers keep bleeding) but we could not finish ... the cole slaw, the fries and the service were all great ... unlike TGIF the other night, the burgers were NOT at 15$ ..
For dinner we went to a place called "DOCKS" .. while it looks a bit like a fancy chain, it is not .. it is actually pretty nice . and we had a seafood salad, steamed scallops and a chilled seafood platter (mussles, jumbo shrimp and oysters) ... and it was all very nice ... I have not had fresh oysters in a while .. they were very yummy ...
Thursday, May 08, 2003
Wednesday night we went to see a broadway show ... after a very brief line at TKTS (a place that sells same day tickets at half price, usually very very long lines, heard about frequent 3 hour waits) we got tix to the the Elton John / Tim Rice version of Aida. For food we went to one of the tourist traps in the vicinity ... in this case TGIF ... we had eaten there often on our cross country trip last year and had fond memories .. and have not had ribs in a while ...
While the place was quite nice, the prices were easily double from what we had experienced on the road ... hey, well, it is freakin' Times Square ... so we settled for one mixed appetizer plate and one rack of ribs .. and boy .. that could have fed 4 full grown people ...
The show itself was pretty good, impressive in some parts .. somehow none of the songs stuck with me ... a bit too rock'n rolly for me .. I prefer musicals with more of a classic musical feel (like Beauty and the Beast e.g.) But I was never bored, the story unfolded beautifully and was wrapped in sugar coated bookends so that the hollywood spoilt american audience still had somewhat of a happy ending ...
After the show we walked to Aquavit to have a last drink with Christian. While I stuck with Gin&Tonic, he made a Creamsickle for Ritsu .. and mix of Vanilla flavoured Vodka, orange juice and cream ... he says it reminds him of an icecream bar he used to love as a kid. We had fun listening to his recent rental car adventures (including the elaborate re-enactment on how he threw the phone against the wall since the rental car agency screwed up his reservation) and general chatting ... We wanted to walk home, but it was raining when we left, so we took a cab.
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Tonight's dinner was mexican. Something we sure don't get in Fiji .. and it seems that the southwest of the US is still the best place to get it ...
We went to Ah! Chihuahua, since it was close and had good reviews .. but while there was nothing bad about the food, there was also nothing notably great about it ... we yearned a bit for our New Mexico experience .. I believe that the Chili at 4 Wind Corner (no idea where that place was exactly .. it was along the road) was the best I ever had, even though it's color of red looked quite strange .. anyways .. back to Ah! Chihuahua ... small, cozy place .. not crowded .. 2 guy waiters who look more like delivery boys (but were very nice) .. no chili on the menu .. so we went with Enchiladas and Fajitas ... the beef was a bit chewy .. the overall flavor could have used some fire ... pleasent, filling, fairly cheap .. and a nice place (better probably than one of the chain places like Manhattan Chili Co) ..
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
So, how was this Monday for you people? Mine was pretty good ... first we nearly overslept, Ritsu had a 10 AM meeting and I wanted to be at my favorite movie theater at 10.
So, after a 20 minute walk I arrived at the Ziegfeld, the most gorgeous movie theater I know. Huge auditorium which looks like an old old theater ... I had seen Moulin Rouge here, which was just perfect .. I also recall that my first movie I had ever seen in NY, Jurassic Park 2 happened to be there ... and then of course the 3 AM screening of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace back in 1999.
So. Today I went to watch X-Men 2: X-Men United and I really enjoyed the ride ... I did not enjoy the seating and the lack of nice snacks and drinks that home viewing would provide. But the movie was a nice step up from the first X-Men movie (which I had seen at the Ziegfeld too) .. it also feels very consistent, as if only a few months have passed since the last movie .. should make for a great double feature on DVD later ...
One word of warning, you kinda need to see the first to get into this one .. they totally skip any rush new character description and just expect you to know (which in return is actually great for pacing and further character enhancement) ... i think most characters benefited from that ... Storm is much much better, Wolverine gets a large chunk of the action (again), Bobby as Iceman is nicely developed from the 1st movie .. his brother (or pal?) Pyro, with the little time he has onscreen, gets more depth than Anakin Skywalker in 2 movies .. Mystique is more and better ... Magneto is great as ever! Maybe even a bit more. The new villain Stryker is dead on perfect.
Things that are somewhat less: Cyclops feels like a throw-away. Jean Gray .. naaa . well . dunno .. her last scene did not have the impact on me as it may should have had ... Rogue .. well .. she got lots in the first movie, so it was ok to underuse her .. Prof X disappoints me again .. in #1 he was knocked out half of the movie .. here he becomes a puppet ..
But my personal highlights were Nightcrawler and Deathstrike ... A runaway from a german circus, we do not know if he is good or evil .. but he is intriguing .. and how he does his thing looks awesome .. he has a great opening sequence ... Lady Deathstrike .. has no dialogue other than uh and argh while fighting ... but her fight with wolverine is just great .. why couldn't they put her in a bikini for that ??? ok .. minor quibble ..
Anyways .. a DVD i sure look forward to to buy ..
Then some shopping and going home .. Have I mentioned how DRY it is here (even though it was raining a bit) .. I bought a technical gizmo that tells me inside and outside temperature .. and the humidity .. only that this word does not apply here at this time ... in Fiji we have usually 75-80% ... here is was 33% when we came .. today it went down to 25% .. any idea what that does to your eyes, nose and skin??? wow .. living in extremes .. i wonder how 50%, the alleged "comfort zone" must feel .. and if it is a reality ...
for dinner (now we are in Nacken Food Blog mode again) we went for the second time to our favorite japanese place Tsuki and had great stuff like Monster Eel (first picture) and oversized piece of eel on rice .. that is like an Unagi Nigiri in XXXL ... then a 3 color tartar .. Tuna, Salman and some white fish chopped to pieces with sauce and different roes (3rd picture) .. then the Tuna Volcano Roll and then the rock shrimp roll, which was not as thrilling as I had hoped .. somewhat too mayonaissy ..
But we enjoyed it a lot, ahd tea and beer and a nice chat with the couple running the place .. they were very crowded and only one sushi chef tried to fill all the orders .. I overheard one phonecall, a customer wondering where his take-out sushi is ... happy and full we hopped on a bus to go back home ..
Monday, May 05, 2003
Not much to report about this Sunday .. not even a picture ... we slept in a little, then Ritsu got ready to visit her friend Yuka. I used the time doing some work on a client's website while still using / abusing the cable connection here to download stuff. Lunch for me was that second papaya salad we took from Saigon Grill last night.
Once Ritsu got back it was nap time and for dinner we went to a japanese Isakaya place, where we had some shrimp in garlic/mushroom sauce, okonomiyaki, dumplings and some fishcake accompanied by some Sapporo beer.. very nice !
Sunday, May 04, 2003
Ok, today's pics come in one big collage ... I am tired and a bit lazy ...
So, after sleeping in and strawberries for Ritsu for breakfast, we set out to mainly do japanese supermarket shopping ... But we started with a long walk all the way from east 44th to McDougal/Bleeker. According to yahoo maps that was 3 miles ... On the way we passed the empire state building and the flatiron building, many shops, washington square park. Since it was already after 2PM, we wanted lunch, and that happened at the best Doener Kebab place in New York: Yatagan. A small hole in the wall place, but for 5$ you are getting a great, authentic Doener. Highly recommended !!!
We then kept walking back east to Sunrise Market, the japanese supermarket. A fun fun place .. tons of stuff that keeps me wondering what it is (most of the labels I can't read) and we stocked up on some bare neccesities to bring back to Fiji.
Hands full of bags we returned home by the way of public transportation (Bus) and Ritsu took a nap. When she got up it was getting close to dinner time and we decided to visit our favourite vietnamese place Saigon Grill. A basic, crowded, highly unfanncy restaurant with fantastic food ... We used to order out from them a lot. We settled with crispy fried spring rolls, my all time favourite green papaya salad, some BBQed pork and Bun Xao noodles with chicken ... the best part is, the stuff tastes even better when you bring the leftovers back home and eat them next day .. thus I ordered a second papaya salad to add to our doggy bag.
We started heading home, kept turning our heads to check if a bus was coming .. but in 30 minutes we walked down 15 blocks and finally decided to take a cab.
Saturday, May 03, 2003
Today was a pretty stuffed, hectic day, but fun too !
I had a meeting for a working session with one of my clients and it was really good to do a face to face meeting again .. we came up with a bunch of new ideas and it seems I will be working with this client for some time more ... great.
Since busses and taxis were to slow during the peak hours I did a lot of walking, which I then noticed I was not really used to anymore .. but the weather was nice and I enjoyed it. When I got home, Ritsu and I went to Sakagura for lunch. Ritsu had a noodle/chicken/egg dish and I had a salmon overkill also known as Sake Ikura Don. Raw salmon slices over sushi rise topped with Ikura (Salmon Roe) ... cho oishikatta desu yo !
Later that afternoon I left to meet with Berna down at the financial center, but somehow we missed each other, then it started to rain and I thought she had left already because I was a bit late anyway (I forgot all about the perils of friday afterwork rush hour on the 6 train) ... but heard later that she actually saw me when I then left .. she tried to get my attention .. but I was kinda running to get out of the rain ...
The next big thing was going to the AppleStore in SoHo where they had a special event for the release of the new iPod (for those of you living under rocks, this is an MP3 music player, you can have basically all your CDs with you in one tiny package and listen to it until the battery runs dry) I missed the 6 PM opening .. but I sure did not miss the line which wrapped itself all around the block ! ... And so I was standing there with other apple enthusiasts, waiting an hour in the rain, till it was our time to get in (also see posting below) ...
This shop is just beautiful .. it reminds me more of an art gallery ... I went straight to the line to get my iPod (and another one for Jonathan back in Fiji) and after lining up there for 15 minutes .. the next fun part was that my CC company really wanted to make sure that I am who I am .. the puzzled cashier (Josh) had to wait on the phone for like 10 minutes until he reached someone ... but in the end all worked out and I enjoyed the event a bit .. there was a DJ playing (on iPods) and some band by the (rather silly) name of "glassjaw" was playing music upstairs ..but it sure was a fun athmosphere ..
Back home I unwrapped my new toy and it is gorgous !!! A 30 GB mp3 player .. that is music enough for weeks .. or for many people simply it means they can carry their whole CD collection in a small pack the size and weight of a deck of cards .. amazing ... it also looks great .... and as I found out, it technically has the ability to record sound, but that seems to be still in testing mode ...
Home now, doing blog update, Ritsu is out with some colleagues, i bet they persuaded her to go for some karaoke after dinner .. darn, i love hearing her sing !!!
Reporting and blogging live from the applestore in SoHo where they are having a big event releasing the brandnew iPod.
After standing 1 hour in line (in the rain), 15 minutes at the register (plus 15 miuntes talking to the CC company, who must have thought I have a substance abuse problem with apple products, after I just bought a laptop there 2 weeks ago) I am very happy that I managed to get 2 of them (one for a friend back in Fiji) ... more later
Friday, May 02, 2003
Lots of errand running today: e.g. I crossed the island (from east to west) to drop of some of our dive gear for servicing. On that trip I passed Times Square and here is a little video clip for your enjoyment. Below in the picture is this one guy I saw, just wearing socks and carrying his shoes. For some reason I found that quite funny.
For dinner we were invited to our friend Jana's place and she cooked cod on lentils, and it was very nice. We had a great time playing with the cat (my right hand sure has some more scratches now) and chatting and laughing a lot.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
I know, this is turning into a FoodBlog ... but it is really just so great to have all these different things that we cannot have in Fiji ... and tonight we went to have some really great Pizza
For that we just walked down 10 blocks on 3rd Ave to get to "Patsy's Pizza". We ordered a single size arugola salad (enough to feed 2.5 people) and a large Pizza with mushrooms, olives, prosciutto and garlic ... and we managed to eat 5 of the 8 slices (the other 3 are in the kitchen now .. I am just waiting for the midnight munchies to appear)
There is something divine about basic pizza .. the subtle hint of olive oil in the thin crisp crust, the understatement in use of topings .. not one of those greasy monsters that Dominos would create !!!
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
We just got back from the Bubble Lounge .
So, how was this Tuesday? Warm ... nice .. not as sunny as yesterday, but very pleasant temperatures, got a bit cloudy later in the day.
For dinner we went to one Sushi place we really like. Though it belongs to the chain of "East" sushi restaurants, this one is the best "Kaiten-Sushi" place in Manhattan for us. (there is one more, called "genki sushi" which is higher in price and lesser in quality!)
Well, this place is on 3rd Ave between 26th and 27th and it is a fun place and the sushi is very good, oh, for those who may not know, kaiten sushi means that you sit at a counter around a kitchen area, in which the sushi chefs do their thing .. and around goes a conveyor belt with portions of sushi on colorful plates ... so you can just watch what passes you and pick what you like .. the color of the plate indicates the price ... so at the end the waiter just takes the stack of empty plates and calculates your check ... yes, just try to drop some plates or smuggle them into someone elses stack ... i bet those waiters have seen it all ...
One really great specialty they have is white tuna, oh so yummy. We rarely find it somewhere else, and never in that great quality ... other things we had, ikura, unagi, uni, salmon, tuna tar tar .... getting hungry again just writing about it .... at the end we shared a "mini udon" ... broth with thick noodles .. very very tasty
We then took a cab to the beforementioned Bubble Lounge to meet with Berna, Chris and Ryan, and to listen to the Lascivious Biddies, a 4 girl band doing jazzy cabaret fun stuff. The lady frontlining the band is Lee Ann Westover, an old friend of mine, from the days when she had a country band named "Strange Cargo". Ryan actually introduced me and Chris at a very funny Biddies event back in 2001. We all were painted green for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.
Anyways, the Bubble Lounge was just as we left it (we had our wedding champagne there 10 months ago), only that now (as anywhere in Manhattan) smoking is forbidden by law in restaurants and bars ... But it was surely fun, Billy, the evening manager remembered us and so did some other wait staff, the music was nice, and on the table next to us we spotted Kathleen Turner. Ah well, that is New York ... we stayed until 11:20 and then took a cab home.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
For dinner we made reservation and the special monday lobster feast place: Mo's Caribbean Bar and Grill. On the way I shot some more video of the eastside at dusk, and here is the result.
This place has been doing the lobster special for quite some time now: first lobster is 13.95 and 2nd and 3rd come for 7.95 ... you get 2 sides with that ... while years ago you could select your side order out of eight, it is now pre-determined that you have baked potato and salad .. the single last decision you have to make is what dressing you want for the salad. And Cash Only !!! Still an amazing deal, and even better: the quality of the lobster is great, they are of good size and service is nice and quick (in this case it was even a bit too quick, lobster showed up 5 minutes after ordering.)
This Monday is another great weather day in NYC. 24 C, sunshine, great for wearing shorts. I spend lots of time running errands like bringing the dive gear to be serviced, grocery shopping (I missed that feeling of schlepping bags full of stuff 5 blocks, in Fiji you just lug it into the trunk) and on the way I shot some various video clips which I put together here.
Monday, April 28, 2003
Sunny Sunday with very warm temperatures! We went to the IMAX theater on the west side to watch Ghost of the Abyss, Jim Cameron's second exploit, err, exploration of the Titanic wreck.
I am glad we had the chance to watch this 'movie' in NY, since there is no IMAX thater in Fiji. But 11US$ for a 60 min documentary is somewhat steep .. but as impressive and well-done the movie was, I was glad it was only 60 minutes .. it started getting repetitive .. and why they had to ride the 9/11 horse of sentimentality??? Ah well .. go see it if you can, no way to download that, and if they ever release a 2D version on DVD (and i bet they will) ... this will surely cure your insomnia ... amazing that a almost all CGI bit of one robot cam (Jake) trying to rescue another robot cam (Elwood, I am not kidding) was the one thing that close to the end woke up the people and was actually entertaining ...
After the show we made our way throug central park ... below some shots of it, us with funny 3D glasses on, Sakura (Cherry Blossom) in NY ..
We crossed Manhattan Island to visit our old NY friends Chikako and Marcus, who (just like us) have a substance abuse problem with Sushi. So we went to another great neighbourhood place "Gari No Sushi" (aka Sushi of Gari) and had the Omakase Platter .. To our surprise it was delivered on 4 different plates (usually one big one) and no one did an nice intro as to what is what ... something we were used to from prior visits. But it seemed that our waitgirl was new and well .. she did her best .. and most importantly, the food was GREAT !!! .. they do some more experimental sushi, more colorful, eyepopping, but nothing as bad as cream cheese and lox (aka "Boston Roll") .. no, really nice stuff.
We had beer and sake and a great time ... Chikako told us about the latest, crazy fashion trend in Japan, skirts that are fashioned in a way that under a layer of see-through material, there a layer printed with the picture of a naked butt in panties !!! Sure enough I had to research the matter and came across this link.
Afterwards we went back to their place for some more chatting and icecream (yum, butter pecan) and then we took a cab home ...
Where I did some more research on those skirts .. and it seems to be just a hoax ! Here another link. Now I have to reconsider what to get Ritsu for our first anniversary, damnit ... well, I can always try to get that sailor moon uniform ... :)
Sunday, April 27, 2003
Today was mellow-day.
We slept in till 11:30 ... Then I made breakfast for Ritsu .. and we slept some more till 3:30 PM ... We then took a walk and went to PetCo to get some stuff for our cat Misha. We were especially amazed by the selection of high-tech kitty poop stations .. one was using a conveyor belt to scoop up the remains, another would actually flush the whole thing 4 times until the plastic litter grains were clean ... wonder how many complains about drowned cats they got so far (those retail for 250$ and 350$) .. we settled for one that has a pretty smart roll over mechanism and only cost 35$ (and fits in our suitcase)...
For dinner we tried the chicken wings from PluckU (since we were out of range of the next 3 Atomic Wings places by just 10 blocks or so) and they were pretty neat, very spicy. Their french fires were surprisingly flavorful (if not a bit soggy) and the potato cheese munchers were very tasty too. Just for kickers I also ordered a cup of their chili, and besides having too many beans, it was good too.. too bad they forgot to pack the blue cheese sauce and the celery sticks. Nice lazy Saturday.
Saturday, April 26, 2003
Friday: Ritsu went to see a chiropractor to take care of her backpain ... while it has gotten a lot better, a nagging pain remained. And it seems this chiropractor seems to be quite helpful.
In the evening we took a bus over to Hoboken in New Jersey (on the way I noticed the above building on 42nd street, which was not finished when we left NY 7 months ago, and it looks pretty interesting. The area around Times Square has changed quite a bit) to visit our old New York friends Berna and Chris in their new appartment (I love what they did in the bathroom with that plastic crocodile). They were receiving all kinds of mail orders for me, so I was like a little kid on xmas opening up all those neat parcels.
Later Ryan joined us and we went to a german restaurant called "Helmer's Cafe" and though I am usually not a fan of basically all sausage based food, it was very nice !!! We had schnitzels and smoked pork chops and sausage platters, washed it down with nice beers! Very very nice.
We took a bus back around 11:30 and it only took us about 35 minutes door to door to get back to our appartment on the eastside. Below is the nightview over to the eastside .. that red light is a huge Pepsi Cola neon sign (here some history on it) (and here another link).
Friday, April 25, 2003
Tonights dinner was fantastic (again) ... we went to Union Pacific where we had dinner the day we got married ... they have a fantastic pre-fix dinner menu: Ritsu had the Blue Fin Tuna and the Halibut, later the chocolate panacota. I had bay scallops, raw on the half shell with each a blob of uni (sea urchin meat), and the Tamerind Laquered Pekin Duck (which was OH SO YUMMY) and desert for me was mango/papaya carpaccio with pineapple icecream ... with that we slurped down a bottle of my favourite champagne, Paul Goerg .. it was great !!!
