Today, the heavens have opened up and the rains fallen. Normally the weather doesn’t impact whatever we’re going to do – dress for it, figure you won’t melt and go on.
But c’mon – we’ve had over a week of rain every single day, which follows a week of record-breaking heat that we experienced in Melbourne.
Weatherwise, the vacation has been somewhat lacking.
We went out and did a bit of shopping this morning at a street festival in the neighborhood called The Rock. It was mostly under tents, so wasn’t too bad whether it was raining or not; just kind of dampish.
Street festivals are all pretty similar. There’s some local stuff that can be kind of cool, and a lot of schlock imported from elsewhere that’s just what you’d think it would be. I think these places all hire someone to fry onions to whet your appetite as you go through.
It didn’t take us long to go through and figure out that we didn’t need or couldn’t carry much of what they were peddling.
This evening we met a friend who’d offered to show us around Chinatown. Ching is a production manager at the Sydney Opera who’s originally from Singapore, although he’s lived in Australia mostly as an adult. We failed to take into account that it’s Valentine’s Day, so the restaurants are packed. Finally, after we went to the 3rd place we were able to get in.
Ching says it’s not authentic Chinese if you don’t have a grumpy waiter. Our place must have been authentic, and I think the waiter was at least 110 years old! Ching picked, though, and we had a great dinner after which he showed us some of the places we ought to think about seeing – when the weather cleared up. It was pouring down rain, so we tended to be darting to an awning and then learning about whatever it was that we’d just passed.
