So after pondering over beer bottles and brewing equipment in Haymarket and the pink dots, I went online and found out the little pink dots all over Sydney were part of a street art project called "Beer Line - from Barley to the Bottle".  It started in Haymarket with some real barley planted in planter boxes.  Unfortunately the barley had been harvested when we were there and it was just grass left.  This morning I went to the start of the line and found some more information.  It was partly in memory of the Castlemaine Brewery, and went in two directions - right towards Redfern, and left towards Circular Quay.  I had intentions of walking the entire line, however I only managed to get as far as Wynyard before I had to get back for Art of the Brick, and then the rest of the week was too busy to finish it.

Beer bottles

Barley planter boxes (harvested, just grass now)

Start of the Beer Line

Space invaders in Haymarket

Footsteps on George Street

Hopscotch outside the QVB

Near Wynyard there was a branch off to the left with basketball lines

Here's some of the other stuff I stopped to take photos of along the walk

The hear/see/speak no evil monkeys had santa hats on

Queen Victoria statue outside the QVB

Dog sculpture outside the QVB

This was all kinds of awesome, but I'll put that in a separate entry

It seems Sydney Buses forgot that hundreds of people want to go to the beach during the school holidays, and were running a regular weekday timetable (actually there was probably a few extra buses that day otherwise we *never* would have gotten there).  So we queued for like half an hour, then had to squeeze onto a bus and stand the whole way.  I didn't have my swimmers since I'd been at Art of the Brick and was expecting Stu and Kore to have gone a lot earlier.  So I sat under a tree.  And got very grumpy at someone who was completely unsympathetic to my not being able to take photos at Harry Potter.  So sat there feeling pretty miserable.  Blah.  Had a snack later with Stu and Kore before heading back to the hotel to recover.

Queue for buses at Bondi Junction

Squeezed onto a bus

Super crowded Bondi Beach

Too many annoying people, but there was a whole collection of nautical-themed Lego setup which made it pretty awesome.  Apparently the company that owns that Aquarium also owns Legoland, so they were doing a promotion.  Worked for me :):)

Triton in Lego

Freshwater crayfish

Some sort of dragon

Either a Murray or a Trout Cod

Eastern Water Dragon

Minifig with penguin

Red Indianfish

Cowfish

Little Penguin

Common Sydney Octopus

Jellyfish

Mermaid in Lego

Dory the blue tang

Fish in the dugong tank

Fish in the dugong tank

Fish in the dugong tank

Dugong

Stingray

Cuttlefish

Shark

Turtle

Nautical-themed cupcakes

Shark in the final tank

Sawfish

Fish in the final tank

Kore in the final tank

Kore about to be stabbed by a sawfish

Kore found Nemo (well Marlin actually)

Clownfish

Super awesome Lego display at the end - the white whale made out of Duplo and the biggest Lego mosaic I've ever seen in the background.  The baseboards had been spraypainted with the colour to be used, and plates attached on top.  But the plates weren't glued down, so there were patches around the edges (and even in the middle) where people had pulled off the plates and stolen them :(

Had a few super yummy pizzas and a couple of drinks and had a nice chat

Crazy pizza stands

Salumi and prosciutto - sopressa, prosciutto crudo, mixed mushrooms, roast garlic and fior de latte.  This pizza was awesome!

Kangaroo - potato base with marinated kangaroo, roasted pumpkin, pine nuts, feta and chopped parsley.  I also really liked this pizza, and it was Kore's first taste of kangaroo.

Marinara - tiger prawns, mussels, vongole, calamari, chili, mozzarella and parmesan cheese.  I didn't actually have any of this one, not a bit fan of seafood pizzas.  I'm told it was good though.

As we left Eat Love Pizza we saw a bunch of people seated watching the Pyrophone Juggernaut.  There were people there testing the flames etc for tomorrow night.  Unfortunately no show, we would have had to come back the next night :(

Didn't sleep very well *again* last night :(:(  Blah.

Headed out a bit after nine and met the little brother at the local McCafe.  Had brekky (bacon and egg mcmuffin and a hash brown.. yumm) then wandered through the Devonshire Street tunnel to the station to buy our tickets.  We decided to get a MyMulti (Zone 1).  

Art in the Devonshire Street Tunnel

Headed to Town Hall.  I went down and got myself a ticket to the Art of the Brick show on Friday morning! 

Kore's first ever train!

Deck chairs outside Town Hall



Then we had a wander through the QVB.  Stopped in to look at HobbyCo.  Nearly didn't get Stu and Kore away from the anime section ;)

Old freight trains
Thomas!
Crystal pavilion thing in the QVB

Christmas Tree in the QVB

Left there and went and got our tickets for the Tower/Wildlife World/Aquarium from NRMA (10% discount - same as online).  Then to Sydney Tower!  I didn't worry about panoramas this time since I did that last time.  Just zoomed in on all sorts of things, and did the tour guide thing for Kore.  And far out it was crowded!  Queued to go up, queued to go down.  And then got stuck in the lift.  Well not really, it just didn't start.  Ended up just hitting the door open button to get out.

Sydney Tower from King Street

Sydney Tower under construction

In the "4D" show
Harbour from the tower

Don't know what this kid was looking at..

Kore up the tower

Darling Harbour

Pacific Jewel

Highest post box.  Except you can't actually buy stamps up the tower.  Pointless!

By this time it was lunch time, so we went to the Westfield foodcourt.  I had subway! heh. Poor sweetie.  Sydney is super crazy busy at the moment, and even at 2pm the food court was packed.  Basically the sweetie's idea of hell :( 

Then headed across to Hyde Park to see the Archibald Fountain and St Mary's cathedral (didn't bother going in - since "pics or it didn't happen" would mean it didn't happen heh).

Kore and Stu inspecting the wicker concrete on a building in Market Street

Kore in Hyde Park

Archibald Fountain

St Mary's Cathedral

A bit of a wander down Macquarie Street.

Hyde Park Barracks

Stu picks hogwart's nose

Parliament House

State Library

Ibis

I told Kore they look better in flight

Conservatorium of Music

And down to Circular Quay, to go see the Opera House.

Obligatory Harbour Bridge photo

Kore discovers the Opera House is tiled

And back to Circular Quay and the Manly Ferry!

Circular Quay station with barricades up to stop people watching the fireworks there

Circular Quay

This was Kore's first ever ferry

Manly Wharf

Wandered up The Corso to the beach.  

Smiley face in sweat

Bubbles!

There are several taps along the Corso for filling up water bottles.  Best idea ever!

The Corso

Manly men in Manly

Manly beach

Kore dipped her feet in :)

Then back to the Steyne hotel for a beer.  We originally had a table in the middle, but then noticed a window seat was free, so we all moved over there.  I tell you what, a nice cold beer, seat by the window with a lovely sea breeze and a view of the ocean was AWESOME!!  Really really nice.  Even the sweetie felt better after the stressful morning.  Decided to get "fish and chips" there because that's a traditional beachy thing to do (and Kore had never had it before, in fact she'd never even been to a pub before!).

Then wandered back to the ferry, which we timed nicely for some lovely sunset pictures over the harbour.  

They haven't finished the barricades on this side yet

Kore's second train

And finally back to the hotel.  

Had to point out that the moon is upside down here

Bat!

Took over 1100 photos today .. whoops!!  Not sure how my experiment to deal with photos on a daily basis is going to work!  OK so an hour and a half later and I'm still not finished processing photos, let alone select some to blog, resize, upload and enter them into the blog.  Might work on that tomorrow morning if I get a decent nights' sleep and wake up early enough.

The sweetie and I got four tapas dishes (Zucchini puffs with Siren's own tzatziki, grilled halloumi on a basil salsa with grilled vienna bread, braised pork belly with pear puree & crispy crackling, grilled chorizo with tzatziki and grilled vienna bread) and they were *awesome*!!! - really enjoyed them (except for maybe the chorizo which was just a tad on the spicy side for me, but still super tasty).

The problem with the dinner was with the organisation.  The dude (Daniel) opposite me ordered a steak rare.  Clinton was a bit late but ordered a well done steak.  Well Daniel got a steak that was well done. About twenty five minutes later (after we'd pretty much all eaten) Clinton got a very rare steak.  But by this time we were all over it and ready to leave so Clinton just sent it back and had it taken off the bill.  Soo annoyed that this beautiful piece of steak was wasted and two people were unhappy :(:(:(

Went home sad about the steak (cause it was so beautiful and Daniel and I totally would have eaten it).  Plus the place was pretty loud and all the hipsters were hanging out there. .. 

yeeup ... 

Below is a picture of a photo we saw in the Asia Bookroom next to the Dumpling Inn.  They weren't exactly sure of the owner of the photo album - it was some businessman who worked a lot in Singapore.  They'd done a bunch of research and apparently they'd even identified some of the people in the photos.  The whole album was very well labelled.  I think my parents' photo albums will have plenty of historical value in the future since they're all so meticulously labelled.  Mine.. hrmm.. well I'm trying .. :)

But anyway.  This picture.  I showed it to Stu because he's been wanting to setup some sort of reading space somewhere.  We still haven't figured out where.  But if he decided not to have his desktop computer setup, we could turn that corner of the study into a little sitting room like this.. could be cool.. if it didn't get turned into a dumping zone.. and if we could find homes for all the stuff Stu has on his desk...

Was an ok day two.  Learnt a few things, but not a whole heap that I hadn't already learnt by playing with the device.

Had lunch with Daniel and Pablo.  Stoopid cafe with far too many people that kept bumping into me - very stressful :( But a nice catchup after I calmed down.

Felt a bit better in the evening.  Went to the Mitre Tavern with Phil for a pint of Mountain Goat and salt and pepper squid.

Another early night for me though.

Fortunately today wasn't too taxing.  Small course, only four people, and I know two of the others.  Turns out Canberra was cancelled because the dude wasn't in the country or some such nonsense.  Whatevs.

So didn't learn too much today - knew most of what was being talked about. 

8:30pm.  Think will go to bed in a minute.

Another little Eee PC (the first one we got three and a half years ago between our wedding and our honeymoon).  While the first one was adorable, it was too underpowered to work with the photos off my new camera, getting photos off it was a pain (you had to do a cp -p to preserve the timestamps on the files), the screen was *tiny* and difficult to use Firefox on, and the final nail in the coffin - it runs Linux, but I need Windows or MacOS to run my GPS software.  

I wanted an SSD for it, but they're really hard to get in netbooks (apparently people want more space so they can use them for downloading holiday photos).  The Macbook Air certainly looked pretty swishy, but at three times the price, and the pain of me having to learn a whole new OS and find replacement applications put me off.  I decided I just wanted something reasonably cheap that wouldn't be the end of the world if anything happened to it while travelling.

JB HiFi had the R051PX for $397, Dick Smith had it for $399.  So Phil looked up MSY and they had it for $299.  So out to Fyshwick I trekked this afternoon :)

Haven't played with it much yet, just doing lots of updates.

Not sure what we'll do with the old one (which we paid $500 for - ouch!!), maybe give it to the kids for Christmas or something..??  

And I still have that old 98 laptop too - and it even still boots!  But couldn't get the GPS software working on that either - it installed ok but then wouldn't actually run :(

Pedestrian crossing buttons - presumably American crossings don't have buttons at all and you just have to wait.  Although I read somewhere that they don't really do anything in Australia.  Unless I suppose it's a dedicated pedestrian crossing where the lights will only change if you press the button.

No 1 and 2 cent pieces - omigosh this is so true!  I *hate* these coins and having to use them overseas - you end up with piles of the stoopid things because they're completely useless!  New Zealand has gone one step further and taken away 5 cent pieces as well.

Stop signs, or lack thereof - in America most minor intersections have Stop signs.  In Australia we have Give Way signs.  Which means you don't actually have to stop, but just need to make sure nothing is coming.  Sooo much better on a quiet intersection!

Number plate laws - not sure what I meant by this?

Toilet seats - again not sure what I meant by this.  Although I do think American toilets are weird with their huge bowls of water so that everything floats around - gross!!

Know how much you're paying - in Australia the GST (goods and services tax) is included in the price tag.  In America (at least the states that add sales tax) you never know how much something is going to cost until they ring it up at the cash register.

Minimum wage/tipping - in Australia people in the service industry are paid sooo much better than those in America.  They don't need tips to survive.  I figured tipping was basically like a service tax that went straight to the service staff, rather than the government.

Orange blinkers - I think in America a lot of blinker lights are red (or white).  In Australia they're always orange, so don't get mixed up with brake lights.

Metric - enough said

Seat belts - not sure what I meant by this

Footpaths - Americans don't believe in pedestrians.  They don't think they exist.  They assume everyone uses a car to cross a road.  At one point we were at this open-style mall with carparks and stores on either side of a busy road.  We wanted to get across to the other side.  We would have been safer getting in the car and crossing to the other side that way than to try and walk across like we did.

Self service service stations - presumably a lot of service stations in America have full service.  I *hate* that!  I never know what I'm supposed to do.  Just let me pump my own petrol!

Street sign labelling - in general street signs are much better in America (or at least better than Sydney!)

Freeway exit labelling - these are relatively decent in Australia now

Bags in supermarkets - not sure what I meant by this.  Maybe I meant the whole issue of taking backpacks into stores.  In America they'd never dare violate your personal rights by asking to search your bag on the way out of stores like they do in Australia.  In Canada they're a bit more forceful about not letting you take bags in at all, so I didn't even go in some stores.  As an honest shopper, I prefer the American way - I hate being made to feel like a criminal by having to open my bag on the way out.

Right turn on red after stopping - this is a given on just about all lighted intersections in America.  In Australia it's pretty rare, but should definitely be more common.