Sydney - Day 3 - Sydney and Signs

On Friday 7th I caught the bus just down the street from where Jose lives in Middle Cove (northern Sydney) into the city centre.  It was a grey and wet day as you can see from the dark skies.

Leaving Middle Cove, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Long Gully Bridge in Northbridge, and Rainbow lorikeets outside a restaurant when I alighted from the bus

I was meeting my Sydney friend Bebe at Martin Place, the pedestrian mall in Sydney's business district. It is home to the Reserve Bank of Australia, head-offices of various other banks, Seven Network TV, Sydney General Post office...
Surrounded by many heritage listed buildings, we can find the 1927 World War/Anzac Cenotaph and a large water fountain.

Fountain at Martin Place, the Cenotaph, Martin Place mall and heritages buildings

We went into Lindt Cafe, known for its fabulous chocolates, where I ordered a hot chocolate made with real melted chocolate and a slice of chocolate cake and my friend had a chocolate cappucino and two chocolate macaroons. All in all too much chocolate!

Sadly the Sydney cafe is also linked to a gunman attack in December 2014, when he held hostage ten customers and eight employees. After a 16 hour standoff, the gunman killed one hostage (Tori Johnson), the police stormed the cafe, and sadly a ricochet bullet killed another hostage (Katrina Dawson). The gunman was also killed.

My friend and I, Chocolate Cappucino, Hot Chocolate and our cakes

After our chocolate overload we caught the train at Martin Place to Central Station and walked a couple of blocks until the University campus to see what is know as the "crumpled paperbag building", designed by the famous Canadian American architect Frank Gehry.
Opened to students in February 2015 - the Dr Chau Chak wing, part of the UTS Business School. The buildings was created using 320 thousand custom designed bricks.

"The crumpled paperbag" University building by Frank Gehry

Various sides of the Frank Gehry building

I had no idea, but right by the University building is "The Goods Line", part of a former freight railway line first opened in 1855. 
It was redeveloped and opened to the public in 2015, as a 500mt pedestrian and cycle path linking the area from Central Station to Darling Harbour.

The area around the Goods Line has a lot of mixed-use spaces to be enjoyed by all - grass and tables for picnics, study pods amongst the trees, table tennis tables, children's water playground and sand pit, and an amphitheatre for outdoor movies and performances.
(there's a yellow table tennis peeking out of photo above - bottom left).

Reflections by a staircase leading from The Goods Line to the University, The Goods line above the street, an old tower part of the University complex and an art deco clock in a nearby building

Sadly my friend had to leave as she had a consultation and we walked together to Central Station so she could catch a train.
It was still too early to meet Jose, either before 3pm at Central Station where he works, or at 3pm at the car rental offices in Pyrmont (2,5km away).

I walked outside the station wondering what I could still do with the just over 1 hour I had, and while having a look at the new light rail network (tram) map I decided to hop on the next one and go and visit the Sydney fish market, from where I could easily walk to the car rental offices. Apart from being the largest seafood market in the Southern Hemisphere, it's also the third largest in the world. Every weekday at 5,30am about 50 tonnes of 100 species of seafood are auctioned. Impressive!
A lot of variety of seafood and fresh fish, clean, reasonable prices and a few eateries too, somewhere to eat in a future visit.

   The Tram at the Fish Market station, Central Station and a clock at the main concourse
inside the station

Fish Market - inside shops, the harbour with Anzac bridge, and Fish market building

After a quick look I walked about 10 minutes to Harris Street in Pyrmont and Jose found me on the way.  

Pyrmont heritage cottages, the pretty pink Bow Cottage from 1870, Donut sign in a coffee shop



 Aspire - a forest of trees under the over pass

Just outside the car rental as we waited to turn into the freeway off-ramp I spotted these glowing trees holding the overpass.

"Aspire" was created by Sydney artist Warren Langley, and reflects the community's efforts to preserve the local housing amid the development of city fringe suburb.

We drove to Middle Cove to pick our carry on suitcase and then on to the Central Coast for the weekend. 

It rained on and off the whole trip and the traffic to leave the northern suburbs was heavy until we reached the freeway. 
It took us close to 2 hours to travel the 80kms north to Berkeley Vale, where I had rented an airbnb room for 2 nights.

We put our bag in our lovely room, unpacked and put our breakfast and snack food in the fridge shelf and cupboard shelf marked with our room number.

The house had 3 bedrooms - the one on the first floor had a permanent renter, a young student, and the other room on the ground floor only became occupied the following evening.

We asked the young student for restaurant recommendations for dinner and drove into the centre to have dinner at Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant at Wyong Road.

We don't like eating at empty restaurants, but the Thai restaurant next door was also empty, and we had to eat, so we went in and ordered.

They didn't sell liquor and the waitress told Jose he could buy alcohol at the Bottle store down the road.

While they prepared the dinner he bought a bottle of wine, and was surprised with the cheaper price.

The restaurant was clean, the food was good and cheaper than what we're used to in Perth.

Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant at Berkeley Vale

 For other signs from across the world follow this link.