nacken travel blog
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.
