Weary, we made our way to the budget terminal - basically a cage with a luggage claim conveyor belt. We grabbed our luggage and found a taxi to take us to our apartment - Quest on Bourke. Just one street away from our destination, there was a protest impeding the traffic. Great! Just what we needed - another delay! We had to go around the protest but as we were crossing the street to get to the apartment building, the protest was streaming past on the sidewalk. I waited until most of them had gone past before I forced my way through the stragglers, not caring if I hit a few in the ankles with my luggage. We later learned it was the Indian community protesting against the recent random attacks on Indian university students.
At the apartment, we refreshed ourselves and then headed out with Long. Lucky bastard - he had enjoyed a night of peaceful rest in a comfortable, warm bed in a heated apartment. While we lay shivering on the floor of an airport terminal. He is so paying for our lunch today!
We went to a Vietnamese restaurant down the street.
beef, brisket, beef balls, tendon,
tripe, sausage, bone marrow
With our appetites suppressed and spirits reinvigorated (with the help of Red Bull), we headed off down the street in the direction of the markets.
With only less than an hour before the markets were to close, we rushed straight through to find the seafood markets.
Long wanted to get some sashimi to take back to the apartment for a snack later. We were wide-eyed and drooling at the size of the lobsters they had.
We also bought an array of antipasto and cheeses. I was in foodie heaven - all those cured meats, cheeses, marinated antipasto - they even had a wine stall. I bought a bottle of wine to take back to the apartment to enjoy with our snacks.We also did a brisk walk through the other side of the markets that sells the typical souvenirs, clothing, trinkets and such. As we were about to emerge at the end, I saw a van with the words 'spanish donuts' splashed across the side. Could it be!?
I grabbed Ivy and we rushed over to have a look - churros!
I bought some to share with the others. They fried them to order, put them into a paper bag and threw on a heap of icing sugar. It looked so healthy...
I also asked for a little serve of the aztec chocolate to dunk the churros in.
We stood to the side of the road to eat it and boy did we make a mess. There was icing sugar all over the road and all over us.
We headed back to the apartment to drop off our hoard of snacks and got ready to go out for dinner.
To warm myself up, I had a glass of the wine I bought from the markets.
At dinner, we met up with some of Fee's and Ivy's friends. One of them recommended this restaurant in Chinatown.
(that's Long's hand)
At the table, Long and I ordered a wine.
Alsace, France - AUD$38
What a beautifully fruity drop. Needless to say, we polished it off in no time at all!
Fee's friends, who recommended the restaurant, ordered for us. I'll try to figure out what each dish was from the online menu.
skilfully sliced from the whole duck,
wrapped in a mandarin pancake &
served with cucumber & shallots
with a touch of hoi sin sauce
served with BBQ pork, roasted duck & shredded jellyfish
lightly fried with garlic & five spicy chilli
sauteed slices, panfried with shallots &
a touch of szechuan sauce
sauteed minced pork & eggplant with szechuan sauce
baked in a hot pot
a traditional Chinese vegetarian dish containing
vegetables, Chinese mushrooms, black moss, fungus & beancurd
This dish was weird - I have never had pinenuts in a 'traditional' Chinese dish before.
Now that I think back, we were in one of Melbourne's most reputable Chinese restaurants with numerous tanks displaying their fantastic seafood...and they didn't order more seafood dishes for us! No steamed fish. No King prawns. No abalone. No shark fin soup. There was just the deepfried coral trout dish. Man, we got jipped! No wonder the bill came to about $25 per head. We were in a bit of disbelief at how cheap that meal was.
After dinner, we walked to Federation Square and had a drink at the Transport Hotel.
The protesting Indians were gathered outside Federation Square and we could hear them getting rowdy and rather worked up so we didn't want to stick around to see it get out of hand and hurried back to our apartment.
We all took it in turns to shower and get into our comfy warm PJs. Benoit and I arranged all our goodies from the markets onto a plate and we got stuck into it with the wine.
Benoit tried to slice the sashimi with the knives that we had available, but they were all serrated so we soon had to give up and I panfried them instead. Since we had no cooking oil, I put a few strips of pancetta into the pan first and used the renderings to cook the salmon with.
Despite losing half a day today, we were really content with how much we did today and all went to bed happy.
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