Things You Must Do: Perth

I’ve just returned from my month long trip to Australia.  It was wonderful!  I would say without a doubt it was the best holiday I’ve ever had.  It was in between semesters, so I didn’t have homework to worry about.  And I wasn’t working and I had no deadlines during January.  Since I had already completed all of the required Winter Terms, I was free to relax and not write learning journals or a travel journal or a response to anything!  I spent most of my time in Australia in Perth and Fremantle.  I fly to Canberra for a couple days to meet up with my parents, and then we flew back to Perth.

This is my list of things that you really should do if you’re ever in Perth or Fremantle.  If you go to one, you might as well go to the other since it’s a 45-minute train ride away and it might even be faster by bus!

*Looking at what I’ve written so far, I’m going to split up the posts by city so you aren’t bombarded with a huge post!*

Perth

Kings Park-If you are in Perth, go to Kings Park.  No ifs, ands, or buts, you just have to go!  It’s absolutely gorgeous.  The views of the city are amazing!  It’s a great place for picnics or to go and read.  There are trails all over, so you can go for a walk, run, push bike, the possibilities are endless.  There are also outdoor movies at Kings Park, so you can pack an eski and go see a movie.  I truly wish I had spent more time at Kings Park.  There’s also a great neighborhood around the park, especially if you want to see some beautiful apartments and condos.

Hay St. & Murray St.-This is targeted at the shopper.  Hay St. Mall and Murray St. Mall are great pedestrian malls.  Between these two streets you get Forrest Chase, a big outdoor mall, and places like London Court, a historic alley of shops.  You can truly satisfy every type of shopper between these two streets.  Whether you’re looking for tourist-y gifts, clothes, electronics, jewelry, Target, or rugby gear, they’ve got you covered.  Oh and body-piercing and tattoo parlors as well, just in case you’re looking for that.

Perth Mint-OK, I’ll admit it, I didn’t actually go to the Perth Mint.  I really wanted to though!  I was going to go with my dad, but we just didn’t make it there.  It was my fault since I was looking for a specific shop, which had moved without telling anyone.  I heard that it was a great experience and it’s really cool!  Based on the good reviews I’ve heard, I would definitely check this out!  Remember, do as I say, not as I do.  Seriously.

Cultural Center: Northbridge-The Cultural Center in Northbridge is really nice.  It’s a nice open area with water features, a nice plaza, and nice places to sit.  Along with these fabulous items, you can also find the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Western Australia Museum, and the State Library.  The plaza is a great place for large, outdoor art or museum exhibits.  For those of you who watch my YouTube videos, you probably remember the outdoor Earth Above.  This exhibit was really neat; it was a collection of aerial photos from ALL over the world taken over a series of years.  If you want to see some of the pictures, check out the YouTube video!

Miami Bakehouse-If you’re in Perth, check out the Miami Bakehouse.  It’s on Canning Highway in the Palmyra/Melville area.  You can catch the 106 bus from downtown and you’ll pass right by Miami Bakehouse.  It’s really close to Deb and Greg’s house, so I would stop there before going home.  Their Vanilla Slice is award-winning and with very good reason: it’s DELICIOUS!  I highly recommend trying one.  Of course, everything that I tried at Miami Bakehouse was really good!

Salsa Dancing-I dance salsa and I always like to check out the salsa scene in other cities.  So, if you dance too, then you’re in luck!  On Tuesdays you can go to The Mustang and on Thursdays you can head over to The Deen.  Both of these bars are in Northbridge and they’re only a couple blocks away from each other.  At The Deen there’s another little room with a great floor, even though it’s a little slick, if it gets too crowded on the main floor.

Al Dente-If you like Italian food, you’ll love Al Dente!  Once again, just off of Canning Highway in Palmyra, Al Dente has delectable food!  Sergio, the owner, is great and really fun!  It’s a casual restaurant that can also accommodate larger parties.  There’s a small corkage fee if you’d like to bring your own wine, which we did all three times we went!

Australian-isms I like

Brekky : breakfast

Holiday : vacation

Knackered : tired (in actuality probably European, but someone here said it…of course she’s from Ireland, oh well)

Marge : Margarine

Biscuit/Bikie : cookie

Have a go

Stubby Holder : beer cozy

Eski : cooler

Let’s make a move/ Let’s boogie : let’s get going

Avo : afternoon

Sieve-head : absent minded

Push bike : bike

Travel Day

Today I’ll be headed to Canberra.  The plane leaves at 14:00 (2 pm for whoever doesn’t know how a 24-hour clock works).  Since Deb was going to have a very busy day at work doing enrollments, she wasn’t going to have time to pick me up at home.  So, I went to work with her!  I’m in her office right now after exploring the campus just a little bit. I had brekky at an on-campus cafe very close to Deb’s building.  Above is one of the views from inside.  It’s an extremely beautiful day, so a short walk seemed very much in order.  While walking to the bookstore, I noticed a fabulous plumeria tree and proceeded to take some pictures.  The thing I love about warm places is the flowers! I made it to the bookstore, perused the selection, found a lovely book on the history of shoes, and decided Australia has much better day planners than the States.  I’ve loved every single planner I’ve looked at with the exception of two.  One because it only showed four days at a time, which is very difficult to work with and I can’t remember the reason I didn’t like the other one.
Anyway, we have a 40 minute stop at the Adelaide airport, so that should be exciting and I’ll be in Canberra, the capital city, around 21:10 (once again, for those who can’t figure out the 24-hour clock, that’s 9:10 pm).

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I’m currently in Adelaide.  I’m sitting in the Qantas Club.  Deb lives large and she can have guests!  It turns out you can pay a membership fee for the club and it is well worth it!  Food, wireless, drinks, printers, showers, great chairs.  It’s pretty sweet.  I feel so…famous and chic!
I’m also uploading photos to Flickr, so check those out here.
I also got a stuffed animal Koala.  It needs a name.  Help me out here.

Fremantle City Walk

As I type, I am uploading a batch of photos to Flickr documenting some of my City Walk of Fremantle. I thought I’d give a short description here as well.

Snug gave me a ride into Fremantle yesterday so I was able to walk around for a bit and sweat a lot. Yesterday and today have been extremely hot with temperatures reaching 40C, that’s about 104F. The first stop I made was to get some ice cream! Gelato is very popular in Fremantle and I’m certainly not complaining!

I wandered around the Cappuccino Strip for a bit, aptly named since there are so many cafes and coffee shops. There are also restaurants and ale houses to be found there as well. Then I moved on to the High Street Mall (see left), a nice pedestrian mall with lots of cute shops.


After that I kept going down High St. and I stumbled across this record store, The Record Finder. This shop has the feel of a classic music store. LPs lined the walls! After browsing through some of the selection, it became apparent that they have a pretty good collection, consisting of (thankfully) more than just Barbara Streisand and Christmas albums. The jazz section looks really good, so that will make for some fun exploring. I also love current artists on LP, so I might push for a couple of those as well.

Then I walked along the beach, took some pictures of said beach, and headed back to the bus stop. I caught the 106, Esplande Station via Canning Highway, and headed home. On my way home I stopped at Miami Bakehouse (see below), which is delicious! I’ve truly enjoyed their Vanilla Slice which has vanilla frosting on top of a pastry layer and then custard. I love custard!

Yesterday evening I went out salsa dancing at the Deen. Around midnight the DJ starts playing a lot of reggaeton, which is not my favorite and it’s difficult to dance salsa to. So, Marcus and I went to the Moon Cafe and had dessert. It’s become a nice tradition to have dessert there after dancing and it made for a calm wind down to very busy day!

Whiteman Park

Today I went to Whiteman Park with Sniggle and her boyfriend Michael.  Whiteman Park has a great Wildlife Center that has lots of Australian animals.  This is the sign you see when you enter the park.  Yes, that is a sign warning of kangaroos, buffaloes, and bobtails.

At Whiteman Park, we started with a Farm Show.  This was tons of fun and we got to see a sheep being sheared, learning how to crack a whip and the physics (?) behind it, and we got to see LAMBS!!  I loved seeing the lambs because it’s one of those words that has a silent B and like many people know, I love words that have silent B’s.  I was just making a nice list in my head. 

Anyway, I did love seeing the lambs, but I had a huge problem with them.  I thought there were really cute, but at the same time I know they are very delicious.  It was quite a conundrum until the guide told me that the lambs are for merino wool only and they won’t be eaten.  So I could pet them and think they are adorable and get all attached and want to take one home!

After the Farm Show we headed over to the Wombat and Friends Show.  This was extremely informative and very exciting!  I guess I always forget the the male bird is always flashier than the female.  Wombats are often orphaned because their mothers die by getting run over.  Wombats can run up to 40 kilometers per hour which is very surprising since their legs are about as long as a dauschaund’s.  An emu, which has much longer legs, can run as fast as 50 kilometers per hour.  Obviously, the wombat is keeping up!  Isn’t this wombat the cutest thing you’ve ever seen??  That’s Sniggles with me, by the way. Moving on with cool things that have happened to me today, I also got to pet a wallaby. And when I say wallaby, I mean a full on “Rock’s Modern Life” wallaby.  Except the cow I got to pet wasn’t near the wallaby and I don’t think they were friends. Wallabies are very adorable and we got to pet one that was a baby!  He was an orphan and he sat in the volunteer’s lap as he would have in his mothers pouch.  Wallabies are smaller than kangaroos, but are very similar.  Once again, wallaby = very cute.  I also got to pet kangaroos!!  All the animals were really soft, it gave me warm fuzzies!

 

Did I mention I milked a cow too?

 

 

I took lots of pictures, so check them out on Flickr!

Things get ugly on Ice

I’m uploading videos to YouTube and the advertisement on the side is something about “Click to see the effects of Ice.”  There are arrows for ageing, sores, and teeth.  I’m, of course, looking at this very confused since I had no idea ice could do that to you!  I though it was for cooling drinks and reducing swelling!  Then at the end of the advertisement there was a website, amphets.com.au.  Oh, now I get it: Ice is a street name for some drug.  Whew.  And I happily continue on with my life, thankful that I have no idea what any street names for drugs are!

Lovely, no?

My what big teeth you have

The other day, I suppose it was Day Six, we went to the beach and had a bbq with Chris and her family.  Chris is on the right in this picture, she’s in a school uniform, Deb is a mad scientist!  Anyway, we’re getting out of the car at the beach and unloading things from the trunk and Chris looks at me says, “You have such white teeth!”  What a compliment!  Truly one of the best!  I guess she used to be a dentist, so that makes sense.  I was quite pleased with myself (and my teeth)!!

The bbq was really fun.  There is a public bbq so we had to wait in line to use it.  The people before us had some young women using it who had no idea what they were doing and just couldn’t press the button at the right time to keep the surface warm enough to do any grilling.  It was very frustrating for our hungry party!  Thankfully, when we were using it, we knew exactly what we were doing.  Of course when I say we, I mean Greg and Simon, Chris’s husband.  They bonded with the guys next to them by offering them some homebrew ginger beer.  It was really quite cute!