Townsville color, Australia
A Thanksgiving day poem and highlights of a foodie
Love is what it’s all about–
but food is a close second.
Nia Simone, November 28, 2013
I was asking an Australian friend if they have any holidays that are basically about food. Not really. Okay, so I have several Australian friends, many of whom I’ve met through blogging, so pipe up if you disagree! Of course, as you know, the food in Australia is amazing, so perhaps we don’t need a specific holiday centered on feasting there.
Australia is my other home, and this is becoming clear as one fellow blogger thought I was Australian. I love Australia and my Australian friends. Today is an American holiday, though, and I’m going to celebrate it by starting this celebration of food off with home-grown and home cooked foods before moving on to some of my international culinary samples.
Home grown and home-cooked:
Greenwich Village Manhattan:
Australia:
San Francisco:
Paris:
Amsterdam:
Thai food
Texas:
More Manhattan:
The beauty of Magnetic Island Australia, 1
I have led you to believe Magnetic Island only has dead trees. This is far from the truth. I’m just a blogger who particularly likes dead trees!
Magnetic Island is just off the shore from Townsville.
It takes about an hour to get there by ferry. We walked over to the big ferry that takes cars. It is the one locals use and is half the price of the tourist ferry.
Showing you the beauty of Magnetic Island will take several posts. Here’s a little beauty to start you on this day before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and just a regular day in most parts of the world.
21 Food! (and setting) reasons to love Australia
Twas two days before Thanksgiving and the blogger was thinking about FOOD. Shopping and planning for the feast while reminiscing about food in Australia.
We ate lunch at one of the many restaurants by the river in Sydney:
Near Bondi Beach we enjoyed lunch at a sidewalk cafe:
After lunch, you could get a tattoo next door. My friend considered it. I did not. (I didn’t even get pierced ears until I was 30. (About a year ago. 😉 ))
Looks like I had seafood again.
In Melbourne, Leanne Cole and I split a basket of blueberry scones here:
And of course, I had a flat white.
Leanne then took us through more arcades and streets. At the end we saw DeGraves Street, which is closed to cars, lined by restaurants and filled with tables and heating lamps. We went back that night and had dinner at a tapas bar. We sat at a bench table inside as it was raining a bit, and just people watched. Since we accidentally ordered way too much food (tapas are supposed to be small plates!) we spent a few hours drinking champagne and lingering over the amazing food.
The next day was epic! Leanne took us along The Great Ocean Road. We stopped for lunch in Lorne:
where we all ordered the most amazing barramundi:
I can’t leave out dessert! So here is a picture of a gelateria where we stopped to fortify ourselves with a couple scoops in Watson’s Bay, near Sydney.
Watson’s Bay is stunning. On one side of this peninsula is the Pacific ocean:
and on the other side is Sydney harbor:
Come back in a couple days for pictures of our Thanksgiving feast. In the meantime, enjoy life and bon appetit!
Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens
I noticed a lot of cities in Australia have “Royal Botanical Gardens”. That’s a difference from the U.S. In the U.S. I haven’t noticed any royal anything. I mean, the reasons are obvious, but it’s not something I thought about ahead of time, rather learned about from traveling. (Love that.) This was one of the many little cultural differences I noticed between our countries. Traveling to a country that shares the same language but which differs in many cultural ways fascinated me. When I travel to some place that has a different language like Peru and/or is radically culturally different like Asia, there’s a feeling of being so far outside my native culture, it’s like observing everything through the walls of a bubble. When the language was the same and the level of development very similar, there was a comfort level (once I overcame driving on the opposite side!) and it was easy to feel at home. Without the bubble, more subtle differences surprised me and let me compare and contrast alternate histories as well as to see the influence of U.S. culture on my personality, word choices, values and preferences.
I think it’s interesting and it’s educational to me to see gardens culturally valued on the level of art. Every city not only has its museums and opera houses but also its botanical gardens. I think in the U.S. the equivalent would be city parks. And our parks have conservatories of flowers and that kind of thing, and gardens, gardeners and arborists certainly abound, but the emphasis and naming differ and I never noticed this aspect of culture until I went to Australia.
Of course, it being Sydney, the gardens lead down to water.
And what’s totally unique to Sydney, at the end of your botanical gardens trek, you come upon the spectacular Sydney Opera House:
Bondi Beach Australia, sculpture walk 3: favorites
Thank you KidazzleInk, SuzJones, and Gwennie’s Garden for helping me decide what to do for my favorites post.
I’m going to start with my inspiration from Suz Jones, who said she doesn’t understand abstract art but loves the sea and landscapes. I agree that these were the most breathtaking of all. So if you don’t happen to be in Sydney during the exhibit, no problem, just enjoy a long, ambling walk on the path from Bondi Beach to Tamarama Beach along the seaside walkway. Starting from Bondi Beach:
go past the rock pool:
ascend:
observe exquisite views:
rock formations:
trees:
and end at Tamarama Beach:
Washed Up by Tunny (Antony) Kraus
And now for the sculpture. Like Gwennie, this was my favorite because the second I spotted it up on the rock:
I stopped and my jaw dropped. This earns it the wow factor. I also love its simplicity, the way it is just a simple reflection of our beautiful world. And finally for its elegance and its message.
Here’s that same shot, enhanced:
The artist, Lucy Humphrey, is a winner of the Helen Lempriere Scholarship for 2013. Here is more info about her and this piece on Facebook.
In second place also because of the wow factor, was this one:
In third place, we have a tie. I loved this one for the wow factor: I didn’t notice it at first. Like in any exhibit crawl, I was saturated from already seeing so many pieces. Any of these pieces, if I came across them by themselves, would make my day, but they were becoming ho hum and I was doing a bit of staring glaze-eyed into space when my friend pointed this one out to me. It was right behind me.
It also places high on my list for concept, beauty and movement. I love visual arts that can depict movement, such as the drawings and bronze sculptures of Degas.
This mobile was exquisite. I wish I had captured it on video for you. It moves so gracefully in the breeze. Each of the arms was of equal length. The piece definitely wins for wow factor, beauty (it’s so tall and graceful), engineering and movement.
Bondi Beach Australia, sculpture walk, 2
Here are the rest of the sculptures from the Bondi Beach sculpture exhibit in October, 2013. This way you can get a feel for the exhibit’s size and for the environment. Then I’ll do another post with my favorites. Please feel free to vote! (To see the first post, go here Bondi Beach Australia sculpture walk, 1.) I didn’t capture many of the names of the pieces or artist’s names, because this was for fun and enjoyment, not work! But where I did, I included that information.
Since this one is in both the first and second post, you can already guess it’s one of my favorites!
After the storm, Saratoga
If you didn’t see the photos of the sky before the storm, I recommend taking a look! Here is a link to the post from a couple days ago:
A November Evening, Saratoga
A November Evening, Saratoga
The sky was amazing last evening. I shot these with my DSLR.
Nicci Carrera 