We start off the day with a car ride around the area we're staying, which is really beautiful. We saw some gorgeous houses that were $2M+ that probably would have cost about $500,000-$800,000 in Austin. We stopped off at the beach, remember these are ocean beaches but with beautiful beaches with really fine sand.
Not sure if it's a Sydney thing because of the ocean beaches or an Australia thing but now is a big time for these Nipper Clubs. Yeah I know, take a second there if you have to. I did when I saw those words flash across a news story and a bunch of little boys in speedos were standing in the background.
Nipper Clubs are swimming clubs for boys and girls under the age of 16. It's HUGE here. When we went down to the beach where the Nipper Club was at that weekend, there was 4 distinct groups with a total of about 600 members then add in all the parents and coaches. Apparently they've had these clubs as far as they could remember, it's kind of the Sydney thing. Practically every kid at the age of 5 or 6 gets enrolled by their parents. I don't think there's a single Sydneysider that doesn't know how to swim and probably learned or spent most of the swimming in the ocean. How great is that??
Then....it starts drizzling. The sky was looking pretty dark but it finally started dropping some water. So we headed back to the house and got our rental car and headed back toward the city to visit Chinatown.
Once we get, what we thought was close and parked in a garage. The sky just opens up. It's just pouring buckets. We're trying to run from cover to cover but was getting pretty wet. We see an outdoors kind of place and make a mad dash for it in the hopes that they sold umbrellas. This Whole Earth kind of a place had umbrellas but small portable type ones. Which makes sense since it's meant for camping or travel use. We pick up one since they were stupid expensive. We attempt to squeeze under one umbrella. It just meant my left and back was getting drenched and Anthony's right and back was getting drenched.
We spotted a Woolsworth (Safeway) and made our way over there for more umbrellas. We had to cross two large intersections and because it was pouring so hard, the water was just rushing alongside the curbs on both sides. Not only was it wide (about 3 feet) but it was deep too! Which meant in our attempt to cross, we both stepped into water that rushed up to our ankles. Both our shoes were just filled with water. I had jeans on so it sucked up the water like a straw. I was immediately soaked from knee down. Jeans wet are REALLY heavy.
We got umbrellas but we were still miserably wet. We ended up walking about 10 minutes before it became evident that we were getting closer to Chinatown. We kept looking for the obvious Chinatown archway that signifies that we're in Chinatown but we could never find it. They sidewalks were packed with people, despite the rain, and the streets were filled with cars. We reached a point where Anthony and I just decided that we were just too drenched, cold, and hungry to keep going. So we turned around to pop into a noodle place that we had passed earlier. Hoping some soup would warm us up.
I think the place was Yee King Noodles. I ordered a beef noodle soup and Anthony ordered a king prawn stir fry noodle dish. Both were superb!!!! You could tell they made their own noodles too which made it even better. I have to give credit to Anthony since he was the one that spotted the place and recommended we stop in. So good, just thinking about it makes me hungry for it again!
Sorry, no pictures of Chinatown. I rain just wouldn't let up and there was just people everywhere that I was too preoccupied to take pictures. I'm sure we'll go back for a visit again.
So yeah, noodles aside, visiting Chinatown was a little anticlimactic. To make it worse...I didn't even get a chance to get a bubble tea!
- julie
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