Adventure in the City! 7/30

On Wednesday, I didn't have classes (tutorials don't start until week 2). So, instead of just sitting in my room, I decided to adventure downtown! I did a bit of research in the morning to find places to go to get a good view of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and found a few possible places. I thought I would just hit them all up, then I google mapped them and realized that some of the places were more than half an hour apart... oops. I decided that I would go to the Royal Botanic Garden, then head over to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair for the sunset, and then go to Din Tai Fung for the best xiaolongbao in Sydney.

I headed out around 2 and took the bus. I never take the bus in New York, so it was a bit of a different experience. I don't know how people know where to get off... the bus doesn't announce the stops. At one of the stops, a lot of people got off, and I almost just got off with all of them because I was so confused as to where I was.

DOWNTOWN!!!!!! :D I thought the street lamps were cool.

So I wandered, following google maps, to get to the botanic gardens. I got to the place where it said it was, but it wasn't there...

I kept wandering up and down the road, around the area, I passed by this art gallery.

I seriously could not find it, and there were some random flower patches along the path, so I thought maybe the 'botanic gardens' were just these random small gardens (which would be super lame). I took a picture of one of them, disappointed, and gave up and started heading over to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair.

Then, miraculously, I found it! It was like 2 more blocks down the road, and not the right place on google maps at all.

Flowerz

Cacti

Me + cacti

Other cacti

Flowerz

Crazy looking tree

Sunset was at 5:14pm, and it was already around 4:30, so I headed down the road to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair.

I asked these old people to take a picture for me (they seemed to never have used an iPhone before, or at least the camera function on an iPhone). They took about 30 of the same picture because when the camera takes the picture it just kind of saves it, it doesn't show the picture on the screen. And they were all really dark in the foreground because iPhone cameras are stupid, but good thing I'm amazing at editing pictures. Look at that sky!!!!!! 

As I was leaving, I got a facebook message from my friend Chloe, who I found out was in both of my classes on Tueday. She asked what I was doing for dinner. I told her to meet me downtown!

I waited at Hyde Park for like 10 minutes. It has nice fountains and also a pretty cathedral.

I walked by Sydney Tower, maybe I'll go up sometime!

I met up with Chloe at Din Tai Fung. These were the most amazing xiaolongbao I have ever had in my life. 

When I get rich, I will have one of these restaurants in my mansion. And eat them at every hour of the day. And will bathe in them. And will die from trying to eat too many of them at once. And will be buried in a casket filled with them.

Me ~

Other unimportant food

A lot of the restaurants in Sydney, even nice ones, are located in malls. It felt a lot like China!

After we finished eating, we decided to walk around the World Square mall a bit. We went to this game store.

Chloe won once in Mario Kart (ONLY BECAUSE I HAD WOODEN WHEELS), and then I beat her once. We walked around the store a bit more, and then decided to head back to campus.

We went to Roundhouse/Unibar on campus, and played some billiards. Chloe beat me twice...

Then we were bored, and it was still early. There's a game room in our dorm, there are so many other things we could've done. But of all things, Chloe really wanted to check out the library, pick up a random book, and read.

She handed me this book, which is so boring. Luckily the library closed 20 minutes later, and I got to go home. An exciting end to an exciting day!