Marshmallows & Merlot

the main course would be Kangaroo pizza, yes, you read that correctly – Kangaroo pizza, with cracked black pepper and a great big pile of fresh rocket, served straight out of the oven courtesy of The Australian pub in the oldest part of the city, The Rocks. Washed down with a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc, of course. If the beginning bit of my Sydney experience could be compared to a bag of Cheezels, then the middle bit of my Sydney experience was a more sophisticated experience for my taste buds. As mentioned in my previous post , our accommodation made it very easy for me and my fellow travelers to trade in sleep for sightseeing. Not wanting to levitate above our mattresses for any longer than we absolutely had to, we set new land speed records for getting pretty and trotted out of Kings Cross and through the botanical gardens as early as we could – the sooner we caught a glimpse of the harbour and the iconic opera house, the sooner the trauma of sharing a bathroom with an, um

it'd be a bag of Cheezels followed by a Kangaroo pizza, washed down with a coconut mojito and finished off with Tim Tams and white chocolate gelato for dessert. From the harbour to The Rocks, from Kings Cross to Manly Beach, from the CBD to Bondi Beach... I found the sights and sounds of Sydney as varied as the tastes and flavours we indulged in.  We landed in Sydney early on a Thursday morning – a little knackered from a seriously 'no frills' 5-hour flight from Perth, but any signs of sleep deprivation were pretty well concealed by sheer excitement... we were in Sydney! The city that I felt like I'd seen even before I'd actually seen it. Driving from the airport to our backpackers accommodation I was like a 2-year old at Christmas, staring out the window trying to take as much of the passing cityscape in as I could without getting too motion sick. This was the city that had inspired a million postcards, the city that hosted the Olympics, the city that has seduc

that go together as well as a giant bowl of steaming hot chilli mussels and a chilled glass of WA's world-renowned sauvignon blanc. The combination of the two would be delicious enough in the confines of one's home but when you get to taste a West Australian speciality in Western Australia, in an arty (so casual it's chic) dockside town just as the sun sets over shimmering teal waters... well, it's not just delicious – its downright delectable .  Chilli mussels & chillled wine with friends – this was how my second day in Australia drew to a close in a little town called Fremantle, in a watering hole and eatery called the Little Creatures Brewery . After an afternoon of strolling around the streets, exploring hole in the wall (literally!) galleries, posing for photographs atop a giant canon at the historic Roundhouse (any excuse for the Three Musketeers to up the embarrassment an te), and indulging in a little retail therapy (you gotta love having family birthda

especially when those three weeks are spent on an entirely different continent to that which you usually call home... a strange foreign land where you're as likely to find a kangaroo bouncing around in an urban area as you are to find one on the menu. Apologies to any vegetarian readers who may find the thought of Skippy on a pizza a tad disturbing, but for those who are keen to know – it tastes a lot like ostrich and a little like venison and is deeeelicious on a pizza with cracked black pepper and a sprinkling of rocket.  Figuring out how to translate 21 days of adventures by plane, train and automobile, into easy to digest, blog-worthy posts, wasn't easy. It's kinda like a 40-something woman trying to get into the whitewashed skinny jeans she wore to that Bon Jovi concert back in the day... lack of content is not my problem, it's fitting it all into cyberspace while it's still freshly imprinted on my jetlagged brain.