This week has been a very short week here in Sydney. New South Wales and most of the rest of the country turned our clocks forward for some summertime daylight saving. It now means my mum is even more confused than ever going from 9 hours’ difference to the UK to 10 and now we’re 11 hours ahead again. Poor lady.
It’s also meant the short week has squished all our normal work into 4 days – in fact only 3 as last Friday we spent with Mrs Romance’s lovely nephews. As it’s the end of school holidays (and we owed one of them a yum cha lunch for his birthday), we brought them into the city to hang out.
Getting everything done has definitely been a challenge this week.
While we’re talking about beer – well that’s what I was thinking about anyway – October in Sydney is a great month for getting stuck into the suds.
If you’re in Sydney this month, keep an eye out for some great events happening. Here’s a quick run-down of what I’ve got my eye on:
- 14th-16th October at the Australian Heritage Hotel in the Rocks – 12th Annual Australian Beer Festival
- 16th October at the Mercantile Hotel in the Rocks – Guinness and Oyster Festival
- And of course 21st-30th October – 6th annual Sydney Craft Beer Week shows off some amazing new breweries and some old favourites.
In fact, one of our posts last week was on one of the new breweries at Sydney Craft Beer Week – Tumut River Brewing Company. This two-man team is producing what I’ve discovered to be my new favourite beer!
Our other feature article last week is here – our review of the newest resort to open in Byron Bay, NSW: Elements of Byron.
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Our latest IG Edition
Mrs Romance is enjoying the new blooms of the spring season. Very pretty.
Mind you, I don’t know if it’s just me but I’ve been sneezing a lot more this spring than other years. Wonder if there’s more pollen around or something. Have you found this?
It’s not a good week here in Sydney unless we’ve been on a ferry. We’ve actually had quite a week of getting out on the harbour thanks to Sydney Ferries recently. How could you ever get bored of this view?
Talking of being out on the harbour, we’re out with Mrs Romance’s nephews today. We’re heading to the Sydney Fishmarkets in Pyrmont. A real Sydney institution, the fishmarkets are something quite special. We’ve actually included this place in our top 9 Sydney markets to visit.
But it’s not the markets themselves we’re interested in today. We’re more interested in the goods upstairs…
To get here though, we’ve decided to take a walk around the harbour and then a ferry to Darling Harbour. Especially when the water looks like this!
And here’s what we’re at the Fishmarkets for: dumplings!
If you go right the far end of the market, you’ll find a set of stairs. Up there is a little hidden gem: a Chinese restaurant that serves what we think is one of the best yum cha restaurants in the city. If you’re not sure what yum cha is, check out our post here – it also covers some of the other venues in the city that do it well.
Our nephews are very happy with this spread. Steamed, fried, combination, sticky rice, pork bun… it’s what I’ve… I mean, they’ve been dying for for ages.
We’ve walked from the Fishmarkets the long way round back to the Pyrmont ferry wharf. As a reward, we’ve decided we all deserve an ice cream. So, into the Star for Messina it is!
If you haven’t had a Messina gelato yet, you’re in for a treat. The queues at other Messina venues can be horrendous but at the Star, they’re not so bad. My tip of the day!
It’s an absolutely stunning day to be out on one of the world’s most beautiful harbours. Here at Darling Harbour there’s plenty to look at while you’re waiting for your ferry too. You can go aboard this tall ship replica and see what it was like. Quite interesting.
And we’ve made it! A busy little week but one that’s been full of fun. Here’s cheers to another great week starting now!
This week’s travel recap
Each week we go back in time over some of our favourite travel destinations using never-before-seen photos of our travels. Here’s where we’ve been looking back on this week.
The beautiful stripy blue and white beach colours of Halcyon House at Cabarita, northeastern New South Wales really makes you wish that bit harder for summer, don’t you think? This hotel went from being a lowly ’60s surf-dude motel to a swanky boutique ’50s retro pad just recently, and we’re well impressed with the results.
Here’s more on what we think of Halcyon House and its cute beach restaurant Paper Daisy.
The grounds at the Parker in Palm Springs California are absolutely divine. I can just imagine sitting round this amazing fire pit with my best mates and my family. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
The Parker is a beautiful hotel and is one of our top three places to stay in Palm Springs – home to some of the greatest film stars of all time.
Our time in Tulum, Mexico was the best. Some once in a lifetime experiences here. Tulum is a coastal settlement on the Caribbean side of Mexico. This area – the Yucatan – has some of the most fascinating Ancient Mayan ruins. In fact here there are ruins right on the cliff.
While we were exploring these ruins, Mrs Romance and I discovered this lock. There’s something about it – and all of these love locks – that tell a special story. Most interesting though is how this clearly very old lock is hanging from quite a new rope. We still wonder now what happened here.
If you want to read more about Tulum and this part of Mexico, check out our favourite posts here.
The view out over Byron Bay’s most famous beach – Wategos – from Beach Byron Bay. This cafe-bistro has superb elevated views out over the bay and up to the Cape Byron Lighthouse. The food here is also brilliant and well worth booking a table.
Beach Byron Bay was an easy inclusion for our post on our 7 best things to eat in Byron Bay.
As I mentioned earlier, the Parker in Palm Springs is a beautiful hotel in a fascinating frozen-in-time mid-century modern town in the heart of the California desert. This wall at the hotel’s entrance is iconic and impressive. Even if you’re not staying here, it’s well worth parking up (it’s free valet here, which is pretty cool) and having a look round.
We stopped in at Palm Springs for a few nights on our driving holiday from San Diego to Las Vegas. If you’re in a hurry, you can drive between the two in about 5 hours – or even fly there in about 1 – but we took our time and did it in 5 days! It was awesome.
Cuba is one of our all-time favourite travel destinations. We’d both dreamt of going here for so long, there was a risk of being underwhelmed by our own expectations. We were in no way disappointed.
This is a photo of the Vinales Valley in the west of the island – the most prestigious tobacco growing land in the world. It’s also one of the most fascinating little towns we’ve ever visited.
We’ve written and spoken about this place a lot since we came back. We’ve been featured on the amazing Y-Travel Blog and I’ve been interviewed on live TV for Sky News about Cuba too.
If you’d like to see what we’ve written about this beautiful country, here are our posts on Cuba.
This is the Hoover Dam. It’s the start of the biggest reservoir in the States – Lake Mead. I’ve wanted to see this amazing structure for years and years, but I never dreamt that I’d be seeing it from the window of a helicopter. This helicopter by the way is heading for the Grand Canyon – another sight I’ve always wanted to see.
I never dreamt I’d be seeing the Grand Canyon like this either! We later flew right into the canyon and landed at the bottom. There we ate cheese, drank champagne and marvelled at the view. My arms were so bruised by the end of that day I’d pinched myself that much!
Here’s our full write-up of the experience and how you can do it too. We’ve also made a video of the helicopter ride to give you a proper feel for what it’s like.
Highway 1, which runs the majority of the US West Coast, is an incredible drive. We took it from San Francisco all the way to LA on one of the best road trips we’ve ever done. And by the way, driving north to south means you get unimpeded views of the ocean and it’s also easier to pull over for shots like this!
This is the Bixby Bridge near Big Sur. Beautiful, isn’t it?
For our full itinerary and where we stayed on the way down, here’s our post on Highway 1 Road Trip – the best way to see California!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s IG Edition and that you’ve got some lovely things planned for the week ahead. Catch up with you again soon.
J&C x
