Hobart – Tasmania -Australia – 2010

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Australia, Hobart, Sea Shepherd Whaling ship, Tasmania

A long weekend in Tasmania’s capital city – Hobart

Several years ago my friend and her partner invited me to a long weekend in Hobart which is the capital of Australia’s island state of Tasmania and about a three hour flight from Canberra where I live.  We stayed at a friend’s apartment overlooking the water which sounded great to me.  The views we had from the apartment were over the Derwent River where the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race finishes.  This race is a huge event that starts in Sydney on Boxing Day where boats sail for over 1,170 kms to finish in Castray Esplanade on the Derwent River.

The apartment was huge and the views spectacular overlooking not only the water but also lovely little tug boats, incredibly expensive cruise and speed boats and docked cruise ships.

We did a bit of sight seeing around Hobart which included the famous Salamanca outdoor markets which are open every Saturday morning next to the waterfront where we were staying.  It’s a great place to visit with over 300 stallholders selling delicious home-made food, artisan jewellery, Tasmanian handcrafted timbers, handmade clothing, as well as vintage collectables, pottery, plants and flowers – everything really!!

We also took a small boat tour around the harbour which was lovely and we were fortunate to have great weather as Hobart has similar weather to England (pretty cold) but the air is so fresh and the sun hitting the water, made it just a lovely time of the year.

And we also drove up to the next largest city in Hobart; Launceston.  There are great views along the way but I much prefer Hobart as it’s such a cultural city – actually not a great fan of Launceston I must say.  We just stopped for some lunch and then returned to Hobart.

Every morning we would start off with a long walk around Hobart streets and around the waterfront.  We saw lots of interesting sculptures along the way – penguins with jumpers on was one of them.

One morning on our regular walk, we saw the MV Sea Shepherd coming to dock.  This is an Australian ship with an Aussie crew and they had just come back from defending the killing of whales by the Japanese and others in the Great Southern Ocean.  Because of my passion for animal welfare, we stopped and waited for the ship to dock and saw the incredibly tired crew and my friend and I were interviewed by the local media on why we were there.  You can see in the next photograph where the ship was rammed by Japanese Whaling ships.

The crew was collecting donations for their cause so my friend Sandy and I donated some money and then she took a photograph of me with Captain Paul Watson – a hero in my eyes!!In 2007 the MV Sea Shepherd was officially re-named the Steve Irwin in honor of the late Australian conservationist. The name change was announced at a press conference by Irwin’s widow Terri Irwin and Captain Paul Watson just prior to the ship’s departure to the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary.  Terri said that Steve would have been extremely honored to be acknowledged in this way as he shared Sea Shepherd’s passion for saving whales.

 One other day we drove out to the Huon Pine Forest.  Huon pines are very slow growing and can live to be over 2000 years old. They grow in the temperate rainforests of the south-west of the state  and are only found in Tasmania.

This is where there is a swinging bridge that extends 100 metres over the river – much too high for me to walk across so I walked the twenty minute looped pathway whilst my friends walked across the bridge.

The route I took was so less scary; excellent pathways and boardwalks!!Tasmania has such beautiful forests and rain forests and this forest was no exception with beautiful views over the river and mountains.

And finally we visited the Hastings Caves which also has hot springs. We took a lovely walk through the caves which were discovered in 1917 by some timber workers cutting trees near the entrance.  

I loved this time in Hobart and spending time with my friend Sandy in such a beautiful and huge apartment…wonderful!!

Hua Courtyard Restaurant – Beijing – 2011

Dinner with friends in Beijing

Along one of the main restaurant streets in Beijing (Dongzhimennai Da Jie also known as Ghost Street), there is a restaurant called Huajia Yiyuan (Hua Family Restaurant) within a fully restored old courtyard. The owners have since restored another courtyard home which now joins the old one via a Hutong (Beijing street).

I have eaten at this restaurant a couple of times and enjoyed a private room on each occasion.  The first time we went as a large group to farewell a friend from Beijing, we were given a private tour of both courtyard homes including the private ancient courtyards with carved beams and pillars connected with interlinked pathways.

The menu has photographs and English translations of every dish which is extremely useful to ensure you order the correct dishes, if, like me you can only read about 100 Chinese characters (and none of those are food), but some of the waiters speak a little English which is also very useful.

There are also pitchers of fresh fruit juice and hot corn juice, which I did taste and was actually not too bad.  There is a range of the usual vegetarian options on the menu but the Yongzheng Dynasty Roast Duck is said to be very good.  It is based on the recipe in the ‘Notes of Imperial Court Food’ written during the reign of Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty and has several accompanying side dishes; including pineapple, melon and lettuce, in addition to the traditional cucumber.

Plenty of fabulous ornate doorways in the restaurant also…

The restaurant also offers a show during dinner which is a variety of Peking Opera, acrobatics and ‘changing faces’…I always enjoy the ‘changing faces’…so clever!!

I have recommended this restaurants to several of my visitors and each has always returned with the same view; excellent evening!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mount Shangfang National Forest Park – PRC – May 2011

Tags

china, China's public holidays, May holidays, Mt Shangfang National Forest Park, prc

Travelling in China during May Day National Holidays

Oh My Goodness, I made my first (and only) major travel mistake in China in 2011.  I had been in Beijing for four months and as May 1st was a public holiday I hired a driver and with a friend started out early to visit Shidu Nature Park.  What I didn’t know was that ‘every single person’ in Beijing was also on the same road.

It usually takes about 2.5 hours to reach Shidu but after five and a half hours we were still driving in what was like a car park and our driver told us that based on the traffic, we still had over an hour to go before we reached the park.  I asked him to turn around and go back to Beijing…one lane of traffic had turned into about four and many of the other drivers had the same idea…just look at the grief on the passengers face..like us, she was ‘over it’…

We intended to go straight to Beijing but our driver said we drive straight past Shangfang Mountain so we could stop there for a break.  We agreed!!

Mount Shangfang is the largest national forest park in Northern China and ‘heavenly ladders’ lead up to the peak where, along the way you can see relics of temples in the mountains. The park covers an area of 3.293 million square metres and is an offshoot of the Yan Mountains which is a major mountain range in China.

However I must say it was now mid afternoon so we decided to take the cable car to the top (and I was feeling a bit tired to even consider walking up the thousands of steps).  But Oh My Goodness, the cable car was so (so) high off the ground.

But the views from the cable car were worth the terrifying ride.

So I learnt a valuable lesson in my first year of living in China; NEVER travel on a Chinese public holiday!!

A weekend in Sydney – NSW – Australia – June 2016

Tags

Australia, NSW, Sydney, Sydney Harbour, weekend away

Leasing an apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour

A few weekends ago, for the Queen’s birthday long weekend, I drove up to Sydney; met two of my friends and stayed in a fabulous apartment in Elizabeth Bay which is a harbour side suburb about three kilometres from the centre of Sydney.  This apartment overlooks the beautiful Sydney Harbour and we enjoyed spectacular views from the two lounge room windows and from the balcony and every morning I woke up to a stunning sunrise over the Harbour.

Our first evening we decided to stay in to catch up so first we went out and bought some lovely food from a local organic store.  We bought prawns/fresh bread stick/cheeses and biscuits and dips.  These we arranged on the table and sat down over a couple of hours, ate lots and chatted.  One of my friends had flown down from Queensland for the weekend and I hadn’t seen her for some time so it was good to catch up.  My other friend lives in Sydney and she arranged the apartment for us but as it only had two bedrooms she graciously gave us the apartment and caught a taxi home each evening to sleep, then returned the next morning.

The next day we took a walk up to some local markets to an area called Kings Cross colloquially known as ‘The Cross’ and is Sydney’s red-light district.  It used to be home to organised crime groups but now it’s really just a street with mixed services (railway, gyms, supermarket, bakeries) for nearby residents and entertainment venues including bars, restaurants, nightclubs, brothels and strip clubs for visitors.

(source: two photos from Google images)

My Sydney friend and I ate corn cakes with avocado (she also had bacon); delicious (forgot to take my phone so no photos), then we went for a walk around the harbour and stopped off for a glass of wine at the Yacht Club – as it was such a lovely day we were able to sit outside looking at the water and the extremely expensive boats.  I don’t think I will be buying one with a price tag of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars!!!!

One of the special things we did whilst in Sydney was to go out to a ‘posh’ lunch  at Otto Ristorante along the Wharf at Woolloomooloo Bay which  serves modern Italian.  This post is a little bit longer than usual as there are more photos of our food.

Woolloomooloo Bay Wharf is the longest timbered-piled wharf in the world,and was completed in 1915. During its working life it mainly handled the export of wool, but also acted as a staging point for soldiers deploying to the World Wars as well as a disembarking point for new migrants arriving in Australia.  Now it’s been redeveloped as a a very expensive area comprising residential apartments [with fabulous water views], a hotel and restaurants; one being Otto which is favoured by many including movie stars..’Cam’ [Eric Stonestreet] from Modern Family lunched here when he was in Australia.!

I also invited another friend and three of us started off with champagne and my friend Tracey ordered a cocktail.  The usual bottles of sparkling and still mineral water were also ordered.

The service at this restaurant is excellent and I had read recently that there was an extensive vegetarian and vegan menu.  My friends all decided to  order the degustation and I was ready just to order from the vegetarian/vegan menu when our waiter advised me that there was a vegan degustation menu – excellent as this allowed me to eat the same amount of dishes as my friends and at the same time.

Firstly we were served some delicious rye bread with butter and my friends enjoyed an amuse bouche of goats cheese and jam sandwiched between a papadum type crisp bread.  I had something similar i.e. vegan cheese, but I can’t remember what it was as I didn’t take a photograph of it.  A bowl of salad leaves were also provided for the table.

 

We drank our drinks and enjoyed the sun as we were seated outside and also enjoyed ‘people watching’ including a couple who clearly had discussed wearing the same outfit out to lunch that day.

This is the menu for the vegan degustation which I loved the look of and every one of my  dishes were beautifully presented and I have photographed each in order of arrival.

 

 

Sensational menu – I enjoyed each dish and if I had to choose one I didn’t really ‘love’ it would have to be the cannelloni beans – the dish was nice but I enjoyed others more.

After our first dish arrived, we had finished our champagne and cocktail so another round was ordered but this time, with different drinks.

Now for my friends non-vegan menu:

The afternoon was long and wonderful and by the time we finished our last drink and dessert, it was dusk…

We left the restaurant and walked back along the wharf to my friends car to get a lift home…such an enjoyable afternoon and a restaurant I will definitely return to when I go back to Sydney.

The next day I departed the apartment to visit my family then drive back to Canberra.  All in all a great four-day weekend in Sydney with special friends and the opportunity to visit my family.

 

 

Qingyang Taoist Temple – Chengdu – Sichuan Province – September 2011

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Chengdu, prc, Qingyang Taoist Temple, Sichuan Province

Visiting a local temple whilst in Chengdu

Qingyang literally means ‘green ram’ and the temple got its name from the two blue-green goats made of bronze in the main hall of the temple (Sanqing Hall).  I don’t know why but I didn’t take any photographs of the goats so I have used two photos from the internet.

The temple was originally built in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), which is a period in Chinese history when Taoism was flourishing.  Over time the temple has been partly destroyed mainly from natural disasters and wars, and most of the parts of the temple that remain in existence are restorations from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The Octagonal Pavillon at the front part of the temple is really beautiful and set within a lovely garden of lush green plants and trees where pillars are spectacularly decorated with dragons.

 

The grounds of the temple are really well maintained.  Lots of different things to see including, the ying/yang symbol as well as the Chinese zodiac animals depicted in one of the pavilions.

 

The temple grounds were pretty quiet really with only a few locals lighting incense and our guide told us that there are often nuns and monks training at the Two Immortals Monastery toward the back of the temple; unfortunately on the day I went I didn’t see any.

A lovely temple in beautiful grounds so well worth my visit.