Sunday, October 19, 2014

My Perth Trip Day 3 & 4

Continued from:
My Perth Trip Day 1
My Perth Trip Day 2

My Day 3 and 4 will be a rather short one because I had personal things to attend to. So I am going to combine Day 3 and 4 together to make 1 post.

Day 3
So for Day 3, CT arrived to Perth in the morning because she decided to find me. So in the morning, we headed to the airport to fetch her before going for breakfast together. She suggested going to "That" Cafe On Hay and here we were.
"That" Cafe On Hay
Muesli, Yogurt and Fresh Fruit (AUD9.50)
I usually don't eat this, but trying to eat clean, I ordered the Muesli, Yogurt and Fresh Fruit. I was quite worried initially because I wasn't sure what's the taste going to be like. It turned out fine. The fruits were sweet and the taste was fine. I can totally accept that.

Morning Glory (AUD8.50)
CT ordered a Morning Glory because she loved the bacon inside it. It was pretty good but if I were to order that, I might need two of them.
Big Breakfast (AUD21.50)
My parents shared the Big Breakfast, which I think is the best to order there. It basically have one of everything in it. We could decide how the egg to be done too.

So there is a blank in between here...

Let's move on to dinner. We were near Broadway Shopping Centre so we settled for dinner there. My parents were happy because there were lots of Asian food. They weren't used to Western food every meal.
Malaysian Gourmet
Chicken Rice,  Beef Rendang Rice with Vegetable and Curry Chicken Rice
The shop owners are from Malaysia, so their dishes were quite authentic. We enjoyed the meal for the night but I don't remember the exact price of the dishes already. It was around AUD10.00 for each dish.

Day 4
Day 4 was a rather short one too. We woke up about 0900hr and left the apartment about 1000hr, so we just decided to go for a brunch instead.
Outside Chapter 88
The place we chose was Chapter 88 by Ciao Italia. I have heard so much ravings about Ciao Italia's pasta but it wasn't convenient for us to go there, so we settled for Chapter 88.

The decor inside Chapter 88 was quite fascinating, so I took quite a few pictures of the interior decor while waiting for the food to be served.
Inside Chapter 88



We ordered seafood marinara, lamb shank and squid ink pasta
Seafood Marinara (AUD33.50),
Lamb Shank (AUD39.50),
Squid Ink Pasta (AUD33.50)
The food wasn't cheap here, but the portion justify for the price. 3 plates of dishes were more than enough to fill 4 stomachs fully. The squid ink pasta was the one right at the back of the picture. It wasn't the same as those we had in Singapore. Those we have in Singapore usually have black sauce on the pasta. The squid ink pasta at Chapter 88 was the pasta that is black in colour. Their pasta does live up to their reputation, it was really good. I haven't tried any pasta in Singapore that could beat theirs. Even so, I heard the pasta here weren't as good as those at Ciao Italia main branch. I wonder how good can their pasta get.

After a filling brunch, we headed to the iconic Blue Boat House at the Swan River. It seemed like it is a must go place when you are in Perth and we don't want to lose out, we were here too!

Blue Boat House
There wasn't anything else except the boat house. The nearest parking space is at the University of Western Australia and we had to walk about 10min to reach this place. I would say it was quite out of the way. Unless you head further down the road, you will reach the old swan brewery (I mentioned it in My Perth Trip Day 1).

Water Town
We visited the Water Town, formerly known as Harbour Town, which was about 10min drive from the Boat House. The shopping mall is known for the brand outlet stores, so this is one place to stop by to get some good deals.
Inside Water Town
The pricing here was quite reasonable here, but we didn't buy a lot of things from here though because we don't really need them at the moment.

After few hours of shopping, we were ready for dinner. We thought Chinatown would be a good place to find Asian food so we headed all the way there for dinner. Chinatown is located in Northbridge by the way. After being here for 4 days, I finally get to see some Chinese words there. 

The irony was, we ended up eating Western food instead.
Outback Jacks
Interior of Outback Jack
The reason why we ended up in here is because my parents haven't tried kangaroo meat before and Australia is the only place where you can get kangaroo meat.
Kangaroo Steak (AUD24.95) 
So we ordered a kangaroo steak to share. Personally, I think kangaroo meat taste better than beef. Even my parents agreed with me after they tried it. The kangaroo steak couldn't feed 4 person, so we ordered the Jack's challenge!
Jack's Challenge (AUD54.95)
What was this challenge about? If you could finish the plate under 30min, you just have to pay half the price, a free T-shirt and a record on the wall of fame. The dish contain a 1kg beef steak, wedges and vegetable. YES, 1KG BEEF STEAK! The fastest record holder on the wall was 5min 45sec to clear the plate, how crazy was that. We had 4 persons and we took more than 30min to finish eating it. That should give a clear gauge how fast the record holders were eating it. Anyway, we ordered this because we wanted to share the dish, not to challenge. I am not ready for it.

Easy Way 1L Mega Cup Bubble Tea
After dinner, CT felt that since we could stuff 1kg of meat in our tummy, 1L of bubble tea would be fine too. So she got a 1L mega cup bubble tea from Easy Way. Oh yes, it took us the rest of the night to finish that drink.

We ended our night with a bloated stomach.

Anyway, since I am talking about Northbridge, this place is one of the few places around Perth that has nightlife. I thought some of you might be interested to check it out.
Clubs along the street
Continue reading:
My Perth Trip Day 5 & 6

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Friday, October 17, 2014

My Perth Trip Day 2

Continued from
My Perth Trip Day 1

Alright, here comes Day 2
So on the first day, I didn't mention where I stayed while we were at Perth, so here it is.

Mountway Holiday Aparment
We stayed at Mountway Holiday Apartment through out the trip. I did a lot of research before booking this place. It is one of the most affordable apartment with great location and decent room. It only cost SGD1042.00 for 6 nights. There were 3 of us so it only cost about SGD58.00 per night for a person.
Mountway Holiday Apartment from the outside
Why did I say it has great location? This picture above was taken from the bridge just in front of the apartment. At the other end of the bridge, it is the Perth city. Isn't it convenient?

BBQ Area
BBQ pits and benches
The place comes with a BBQ area as well which is free to use. It was a pretty decent place if you intend to do a BBQ while staying there. I actually thought of it but we don't have the time to do it. Maybe next time...

So the apartment is located at the road named Mount Street

Just along the road, there is a great place for workout.
Nice workout place with wonderful scenery
Check this place out, there were quite a number of people doing workout there. I would be totally motivated to exercise with such a pretty view. But that's not all... Go near to the railings and look down.
Jacob's Ladder
It is the Jacob's ladder. When I saw this, I got an awesome workout regime in my mind straight away. This is so cool! Fort Canning Park is the closest I can get to this in Singapore, but still not comparable enough.

Just a stone throw away is where the King's Park located. The moment I walked into the park, the first thing I noticed is this super huge tree.
Huge tree
 You know, it would be such a waste if I don't climb it.
On the tree
King's Park is really pretty...
Into King's Park







Anyway King's Park is 90 hectare in size. Because of the large space area, the police rode on horses to patrol the park. Cool right?
Police on horses
I didn't finish the whole area of the park though. It was too huge. It would have taken at least half of my day just to tour the whole park. I completed about half the park and it already took me almost to lunch time already.

Since it was lunch time already, we headed down to Hilarys Boat Harbour for our lunch.
Hilarys Boat Harbour
So I spotted this Beach Shack.
Beach Shack
Nope, we didn't have out lunch here. The place was so nicely decorated that I just took a picture of it.

Nino's Fish Bar & Cafe
 We had our lunch at the Nino's Fish Bar & Cafe. We ordered a Barramundi & Chips and Salt & Pepper Soft Shell Crab to share.
Barramundi & Chips (AUD16.90)
Basically, a Barramundi is a seabass. They have a variety of different fish & chips but I just randomly chose this one. Even if you gave me different type of fish, it will still taste the same in my mouth. 

Salt & Pepper Soft Shell Crab (AUD25.50)
Actually, what I love about this soft shell crab dish was the salad. By saying that, you should know by now I am not really a seafood fan. Anyway, there was so much chips that we couldn't even finish even though I lov fries. 

With our full stomach, we took a stroll around the harbour to help us with the digestion.
View of Hilarys Boat Harbour
When I was outside, I thought there wasn't much to see here except for the beach, but I was wrong.

Even though the shopping area doesn't look huge, there were rows and rows of shops selling all sorts of items.

The little beach
 Then right in front of the harbour is this small beach area for people and seagulls to play. There is a larger beach area nearby but I didn't go over to that side so no picture for that.

Another highlight at Hilarys is the Aquarium Western Australia. It has the largest single aquarium and walk through underwater tunnel in Australia.
Aquarium Western Australia
The entrance was AUD29.00 for an adult. There were quite a lot of underwater creatures to see there, but then again, all the aquariums that I have been were generally quite similar. Although AQWA has some breed of underwater creatures that are exclusive to Australia, I am no expert to tell them apart from those in other countries.
Clown fish under magnifying glass
Seahorse under magnifying glass
Differentiating turtles
 There was a board that taught us how to differentiate turtles from one another which I find it interesting. I used to see turtles as just turtles when I went to the Live Turtle & Tortoise Museum.

While in the aquarium, I saw a group of tourists climbing onto the rocks along the coastlines. That was so "tourist" but I would have done it too if I were out there.
Tourist on the rocks
For your information, the water body in the picture is none other than the Indian Ocean.

By the time we left the place, it was about 1700hr. We headed back to the city to have our dinner. My parents wanted something with rice so we found this Corner Cafe which serve Asian food.
Corner Cafe
Curry Chicken Rice
I remembered I ordered their curry chicken rice. But I forgot what are the remaining 2 dishes that my parents ordered. One was a beef and the other was a chicken though.

I tried all of them and all of them tasted good. They were more of a fusion rather than the authentic dishes, but it was still satisfying to eat there. I forgot the prices for each of the dishes already. The total price was AUD38.85 for all the 3 dishes.

There isn't much things to do at night in Perth, so we retired back to our apartment after dinner.

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