Watch me wallabies feed *

As it turns out, Kylie Kwong's restaurant in Sydney is actually called Billy Kwong, after her father. This is not your usual Chinese restaurant; chopsticks on the table were the only visible clue as to it's origins. No dragons, Buddhas, terra cotta warriors, or fierce lions are to be seen. Some menu items were on the unusual side; the chicken feet proffered at the Chinatown restaurant the previous night would have seemed downright do-able compared to Wallaby tails or meal worms listed on the Kwong menu. In the end, the fish cheeks (the most delicate part of the fish) with the fish "collar" fins was about as off- the -beaten trail as we got last night. The steamed fish had delicate flavors, and the green beans nice and crispy/crunchy. Although the portions are tapas sized, if you order enough dishes, it can add up to a whole meal. The open kitchen invited me to take a few photos.

It seemed like old home week as we met one of Yi's schoolmate friends from Fiji today. Vanessa met us at the New South Wales Art Museum where we took in a few galleries of European style painting and Aboriginal art. Many Australian painters studied in France and Italy and had exhibitions in the Paris Salon in the 1850s through the early 1900s. But the subject was invariably Australian: mining/panning for gold, sheep shearing, rugged mountains, and other agriculture scenes were common. The variety of abstract shapes and colors  in aboriginal work is astounding. Well, at least it seems abstract to me, but the shapes and symbols often refer to some Aboriginal "dreamtime". Dreamtime images can be about how the earth was created and how everything came out of the earth from a once dark, flat land. Some paintings are maps of places and objects as imagined from an aerial view, and depict important (especially in deserts) places such as well holes, rivers, paths, and the like.

Vanessa and Yi in the Sydney Botanical Gardens

It was a warm sunny day, so after lunch in the botanical gardens we continued walking around a vast park area of the Domain and around Wooloomooloo Bay, eventually ending up, guess where? On the shopping streets, where, surprise, surprise, a UNIQLO store appeared; the shopping genes kicked in, and an hour later we were on our way back to our Darling Bay hotel. We probably walked more than 5 miles in this eminently walkable city.

One is transported to the lush tropics in the Botanical Gardens 

Our hotel is well equipped--it has a kitchenette and laundry facilities. So we did some shopping at David Jones...a department store...and more. The food section is similar to a Dean & DeLuca, so we found everything we needed: a Chianti wine to go with our pasta dinner, Gran Padano cheese, grilled artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes for the pasta, rocket salad, and more. While traveling, I always recommend traveling with a chef who can do miracles with a few choice ingredients. Yi's dinner was "eccellente"!