Monthversary of being in Sydney!

This Saturday was the one month anniversary of arriving in Sydney! To celebrate in the terrible weather, I decided to head over to the Contemporary Art Museum, and the Art Gallery of NSW (New South Wales).

I must say, these are my two favorite art museums that I have ever been to. Minneapolis (Walker and the MIA) are okay art museums, not to bash them, but I feel the Walker is too contemporary for it's own good (yellow, blue, and red canvases next to one another are not art, thank you very much), and the MIA is just a bit…snoozy.

The Contemporary Art Museum was filled with a current exhibit of photographs, mainly of people. The artist was looking for the viewer to see through the face and see more to the story of the person behind it. He stated (in quotes on the wall), that observing a new culture is not necessarily always about the other, but may also be about the you and your perception of the culture. His photographs were his perception of this new culture he was exploring. I LOVED this exhibit and since it is free, I may swing in again if I find myself in Circular Quay between 10am and 5pm.

After this, I took the train over to the stop nearest to the Art Gallery of NSW. Now, I knew the Art Gallery was NEAR the Royal Botanical Gardens, but I didn't realize it was actually IN the RBG. This was a pleasant surprise and led to Sunday's journey around the RBG. Anyway, the Art Gallery of NSW was a very tasteful blend of newer, 20th century art, and classic, yet still interesting, 18th and 19th century art. There was also a small gallery of contemporary art (which was a bit too walker-y for me), as well as some Asian art. I loved how this museum was set up, the atmosphere that the displays set, and just the overall collection. Fell. In. Love.

Yazi and I then met up and decided to try to find Paddy's Markets. People talk about Paddy's Markets like it's the greatest thing on the planet, so we wanted to see what was so great about them. We were sitting on a street corner in Hyde Park looking on the maps to see if Paddy's Markets was highlighted on any of them, and it wasn't. Conveniently, some man came up to us and asked us where we were trying to go. He gave us terrible, terrible directions (but mentioned my one beef about Sydney maps and how incredibly difficult they are to navigate - I'm happy I'm not alone in this sentiment), but at least got us heading in the right direction. We took off and, like most adventures, just hoped for the best.

Of course, we got lost. This was not our fault. He told us to look for the railroad in the street, and take a right after that. Well, needless to say, there's a monorail (a railroad, while in the sky, crosses the street), and then a lightrail about 3 blocks later (a railroad in the street). We took the right at the monorail, not the lightrail, which was where we went wrong.

Now, Paddy's Markets are located right outside of Chinatown, but Chinatown was located between where we were and Paddy's Markets. We opened up our maps again, hoping that someone would nicely ask us what we were looking for, but this clearly wasn't happening. I started to look around for someone to ask and before I knew it, Yazi was walking up to an elderly Asian lady who, as I could have guessed, didn't speak English. She understood English, but didn't speak. And after a few hand gestures, Yazi and I started to follow an Asian lady through an Arcade*

(*Note about Arcades: This is not an American Arcade, of course. Just like the hotels, I have no clue what an American Arcade is called, but an Arcade is a pathway from one block to another block and god only know where that other block is going to be. There are always billions of shops in Arcade's, and we always get lost in them. Honestly, you'll get into an Arcade and it'll say "Thru to Pitt Street" and you know Pitt Street, but the Pitt Street that you end up at is NOT the Pitt Street you know and you have no clue how you got there and it's just such a waste of time to walk back.)

Following, following, following, I'm about 10 steps behind Yazi who is essentially holding this lady's hand and I am just laughing at this situation. Yazi and I are both pretty confident in the city now that regardless of what happens, we'll find our way back, so this was getting pretty humorous to both of us (as opposed to the first couple weeks where we would have been freaking out since we had no clue where we were going). Eventually we exited the arcade (at god knows where), and watched the lady point with her hand to tell us where to keep going. As soon as we got outside of earshot of the lady, I asked Yazi if she knew where we were going. Of course she didn't! We got the first bit that we were supposed to walk in a certain direction, but after that we were just clueless. At this point we are in the HEART of Chinatown. There is hardly any English on any of the street signs, and our hope of finding someone else to ask is getting slim. Luckily! There was a police office giving a car a parking ticket, so we were able to ask him!!

Eventually we found our way to Paddy's Markets (which, btw, were a total let down. Apparently Yazi went back on Sunday though and found the real Paddy's Markets and they were much better, so that may be a "last weekend" adventure). After a couple hours here, we decided to head back to Surry Hills, grab a bite to eat, rent some movies, and get some groceries. We ate at a delicious wood-fired pizza place - I had the vegetarian supreme while Yazi had the seafood combo. Australian's don't joke when they state that "Baby Octopus" is on the pizza. It is quite literally a baby octopus, head, tentacles and all the works. The vegetarian supreme was DELICIOUS! Oh man, that was a good $20 pizza.

As a side note, I am extremely happy in my choice of shoes for this day. Generally, I stupidly wear heels to art galleries. Luckily, with all the walking I'm doing in Sydney, my choice of shoes was flats, and thus didn't make the overly loud heel noise through both museums!