Burning Koala (aka Angela and Eric) has just posted some lovely photos of Sydney University and Victoria Park. This is just a few streets over from our house and it’s one of the prettiest places on this side of Sydney.
Tag: sydney
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Greek Festival, Darling Harbour
I can’t believe I finally scooped Helen! On Sunday the Snook and I walked down to Darling Harbour to check out the big Greek Festival. It was beautiful and sunny and hot and crowded. We had some food and watched some dancers. I had a great time! (The Snook was less entranced: “I’m not emo; I just hate people.” We saw that graffito once and it’s become a catchphrase.) I even took my camera…
My first stop was sweet-corn-on-a-stick. I’m not sure how Greek that is, but it was SO. GOOD. I had it with margarine and salt and pepper.
Next we stood and watched a troupe of dancers perform the song everybody was waiting for: “Zorba the Greek.”
Time for more food! We joined the extremely disorganized queue and waited… and waited…
We’d decided against the loukoumades, which were like deep-fried balls of dough dipped in honey. They looked amazing but definitely not in my daily Points allotment. (Incidentally, I’m amused that Helen took almost this exact same picture.)
I had the vegetarian “souvlaki,” which was basically a pita with chargrilled vegetables, garlic, and tzatziki. They’d made them up ahead of time so it was cold, which was my only complaint. Otherwise… delish.
Snookums went for the full meat option. Mmm, looks good.
It’s fun being a wannabe food-blogger… 🙂
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NO WAR
Wow! Two guys climbed the Sydney Opera House this morning and painted “NO WAR” on it in giant red letters. While I admire the sentiment, couldn’t they have defaced an unattractive building? Like, say, Kirribilli House?
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A facelift for the Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is getting a $24 million facelift and – even more interestingly – the original architect is going to advise on the project. When I first visited the Opera House last year, I was amused to hear the story of Joern Utzon and how he angrily abandoned the project after years of fighting with the government. Since he left before the inside was finished (and took all his plans with him), the builders had to figure out what to do with the interiors themselves. And that’s the whole problem, you see. The inside is crap. It’s just so 1970’s. The main decorative element inside is “exposed concrete”, which gives the entire space that lovely “Barbican” feel. (For you non-Brits, that’s the gigantic concrete arts complex in London. More modern architecture at its very worst.) The actual furnishings are all wood paneling and shag carpeting. Really, the interior of the building is the aesthetic opposite of the exterior. So that’s why it’s such a great thing that Utzon is finally coming back to fix some of the more egregious errors. I can’t wait to see it.
(Incidentally, I went to the Sydney Morning Herald to see if I could find the official story about this. It wasn’t on the home page, so I used their search box. Sure enough, I found the story, which had been published yesterday. But get this! They tried to charge me a dollar to read it! For an article from yesterday! That’s ridiculous.)
Edited 23/03/2025: Original link is dead and not archived.
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Happy birthday, Harbour Bridge!
The Sydney Harbour Bridge turns seventy years old today. A bunch of people born on the same day climbed it today. See, I told you it wasn’t scary! Happy birthday, Bridge! -
Sydney
Sydney is apparently the fourth most desirable city to live in. That’s out of the whole world, folks. Granted, it’s the air pollution that’s keeping it down (we have to wash icky black stuff off our balcony chairs before sitting in them), but there’s a million other things that make up for it. And considering that London is way down at #41 (and falling), I definitely feel like we’ve traded up.