Enjoying Sydney

Dinner at Darling Harbor

Tom and Jay flew to the Great Barrier Reef on Monday, so we had dinner with them Sunday night at a seafood restaurant on Darling Harbor.

Our hotel concierge recommended Nick's 103. The food was good, but service was terrible.

Nick's was a fun, lively place.

Diners waiting patiently for some service. Our patience ran out eventually.

I had the lobster and just had to post a photo of it. It was huge.

Darling Harbor at night is beautiful.

This building housed a gelato stop where we ended our evening.

Manly Beach

For our Sydney Harbor Cruise, we chose the economical public ferry to Manly Beach.

And we are underway. It was a hazy morning in Sydney, so we decided to take harbor cruise photos on the way back.

Manly Wharf. The Manly Beach area was named by an early Sydney settler for the particularly masculine group of indigenous people he found living here. I guess he could have named it "Aggressive Beach" or "Really Scary Big Native Beach."

Manly Beach is a very pretty suburb of Sydney.

The beach walk is lined with pine trees.

Here is the beach itself. Lovely, clean pale sand and beautiful blue water.

We continued off the far end of Manly Beach to a more secluded area of Cockleshell Cove called Shelley Beach.

View of north Manly Beach from Shelley Beach. It was a perfect beach day, although the water was a little cold

For lunch, we walked back to Manly Beach to a little bistro on the beachfront.

Cute place. We had fried soft-shell crab burgers and white wine for lunch.

Leaving Manly Wharf on our way back to Circular Quay ferry station. This is another view of Manly Beach.

It was a beautiful day for sailing.

Sydney reappears.

Sorry. I had to take one more shot of the bridge. It's what you do on a "harbor cruise!"

And the beautiful Opera House once again.

The Queen Victoria Building

We spent a morning wandering through the Queen Victoria Building. This building, completed in 1898, was originally built to house shops and vendors of various types. It covers an entire city block of downtown Sydney, and is probably the oldest and one of the largest shopping malls on the planet.

The building was named for Queen Victoria to celebrate her Silver Jubilee. It was completely refurbished and restored in 1984, and now houses a broad array of upscale shops and restaurants.

Queen Vic herself stands sentinel on the corner of George Street.

The restoration of this building is very well done.

Looking from the middle of the building along a shopping floor.

Under the great dome of QVB, the building is open to the ground floor.

Stained glass windows light the stairwells.

This view shows the three upper shopping levels.

Looking up into the great dome.

This whimsical clock hangs in the center of the galleria. We made it out of the QVB with only two purchases--both stuffed toys for the grandkids.

Dinner in Darlinghurst

After the expensive dinner at Nick's 103, we were looking for good food in a less pretentious area. We walked from our hotel into the area of Sydney called Darlinghurst. Known for old townhouses and trendy shops and bistros, Darlinghurst is a bit bohemian.

We found A Tavola listed with good reviews on an online restaurant guide and decided to give it a try.

A small family restaurant with homemade pastas, A Tavola had a lively vibe.

 

We both ordered the "orchietto" which was shell pasta with fresh scallops, broccolini, and pine nuts. It was not as spectacular as my lobster presentation from the night before, but it was delicious.

A satisfied A Tavola patron. Now where can we find a sidewalk cafe and a cognac? Good night, Sydney!