An earlyish start this morning to tackle a restaurant I’ve been looking forward to for a while. We have most of Bill Granger’s books, and find his recipes simple and stunningly nice. We arrived just after 9:30am to his original Bills restaurant, and were pleasantly surprised to get a seat straight away. I quickly decided I should have eggs, as it was what built his reputation in the first place. Emma joined me in having Scrambled Eggs with Sourbread. I also had mushrooms on the side, while Em had tomato and bacon. Simon ordered banana hotcakes (which looked brilliant). The eggs didn’t disappoint – really silky and unlike any other scrambled eggs I’ve had before. They rocked.
From Bills, the three of us walked back towards town, through Hyde Park and the Botanic Gardens towards the mainstay of Sydney tourism – Circular Quay. We completed the mandatory viewing of the Opera House and the across the river look of the Harbour Bridge, before wandering around the Quay and underneath the Bridge itself. It really is an enormous structure, and you can understand why it is marvelled at. The pure height it sits off the water level, and the span it completes without supporting beams running through the water are amazing. It wasn’t amazing enough for us to climb to the top, however!
Time for some shopping. With promises of an enormous Westfield shopping centre in Bondi, we rushed to the train station, bought our ticket, rushed down the 155 flights of stairs (or so it seemed) and… trains to Bondi cancelled for the weekend due to track work. Damn! Finding the corresponding bus took an age, and by the time we got to Bondi Junction, we were pretty exhausted. The place is huge though. Taking up two entire blocks, there are also six levels on each block. It was big. We took the time to do some much-needed clothes shopping to get us through the rest of the year at work, I bought Emma’s birthday presents, and we caught the bus all the way home, again being quite frustrated at the lack of signage provided as to where to catch the “train-bus”.
Tomorrow we’re planning on hiring a car and tackling some Blue Mountains action, under Simon’s guidance. To be honest, we’re quite glad, as we’re slightly let down by the “touristy” things here, as opposed to Melbourne’s more natural style of things. Mind you, I can’t complain about the Sydney food… I’ve had some of the best meals ever in just 24 hours! With hopefully more good food to come tonight…
