Australia with the Windahl family: Day 6 Shopping, sightseeing and viking dinner in Sydney

We started the day driving to the Macquarie shopping center. I did not have my best day as navigator since I missed to exits and we ended up driving over Harbour bridge no less than two times. It took about one hour instead of 25 min. The upside of it is that we will remember it, and we got to see Harbour bridge quite well which was not too bad! Once we arrived to the mall we had spectacular pastries at Koi dessert café. It was all Alice´s choice and she had been looking forward to this. We all had different goodies so we could taste each others. Mine was called "moss in a jar", and it really looked that that too, but tasted deliciously of pistachio among other flavors. We then all did shopping in our own tempo and reassembled to go back to Kirribilli and leave the car.

First time over the bridge

Moss in a jar at Koi dessert café

Alice treated us all to cakes at Koi

The next stop was the famous Opera house, but we took the ferry from Kirribilli wharf, which only is a couple of minutes walk from where we stay. That way we had a fantastic view over the Opera house from the seaside, before walking the crowded walk to the house itself to marvel and take selfies. We then thought there was a number of cafés along the quay, but it was only the Opera bar and kitchen that had all the tables and we wanted something lighter. After som trial and error we found a place close to Cirular Quay station that was decent enough for everyone's taste.

The Operahouse from the seaside

Alice looking out

In front of the Opera house

The Opera house from The Rocks side

The Rocks was our next goal. It is the part of Sydney that first was built by the convicts shipped from Britain, basically on the spot where they landed. There is a monument over that on the square, but today the area has restaurants, shop with souvenirs (the slightly more qualitative type) and artwork. The Museum for Contemporary Art is also in the area (even if we not had time to go there). The people stepping ashore on this location today are mainly international cruise passengers, so much has changed since the first British ship with convicts arrived in 1788.

Monument in The Rocks

Old and new

On the way from The Rocks I also managed to find a shop that sold stamps, after trying for several days. No mailbox was in sight, so the enterprise of sending a postcard is definitely more complicated than it used to be. We did manage to get on a train towards a restaurant Alice had found us. It turned out she had seen it on Buzzfeed. It is called Mjölner, is started and managed by a Swedish chef and of course has some kind of Viking inspiration. It is located a bit south of Central station, in a basement and decorated with shields, runes, helmets, along with whisky bottles and jewelry and sword replicas. As a welcome drink you get a shot of enforced mead, and of course you can order mead, and have it in a horn. The menu has a number of dishes with a lot of meat; pork belly, half a chicken, half a duck is what we tried. Those who wanted to also tried an oyster as a starter, a first time for Alice and Lennart. It all tasted very good, even if the Viking element was more inspiration than anything perhaps. If we had been able to eat dessert, we could have had "skånsk äppelkaka". Very happy and very full we went back to our apartment with the wonderful view. I even managed to find a mailbox in Kirribilli, and we have booked all the rest of the nights for the journey to Adelaide. First one will be in Merimbula, about 600 kilometers south of Sydney on the coast.