Aroma Festival, Lunch Cruise, and Chinatown

Today Was a nice, sunny day again in Sydney. Mom slept 18 hours yesterday and awoke ready to have a full day of activities today!

We got ready and made breakfast in the hostel. I was a little annoyed to find someone stole my tortilla chips that were to be used for Mexican taco salads on Monday night dinner (it's the first time I've ever had anything pinched while staying in hostels!), but I had to move on. After breakfast, we walked down to the Circular Quay area where the Aroma Festival was being held today. It was basically booth after booth of delicious things: chocolate, coffees of all varieties, glazed and spiced nuts, churros, gelato, and such. Mom and I sipped on a cafe latte as we walked from booth to booth. We also got some spiced peanuts, hot fresh mini donuts with cinnamon and sugar, and something called a spiral spud, which is a potato on a stick that has been cut into a fun spiral shape, fried, and sprinkled with the seasoning of your choice. It was glorious, and I cannot believe I haven't seen such a thing at the NC state fair.

Around noon, we began to make our way through the city to go to our lunch cruise (yes, more food!). We boarded the ship at 1:30 and we seated beside another mother-daughter couple who were from France. We took lots of amazing pictures from the ship, the best being below, and spent a lot of the 3 hours keeping our glasses from sliding off the table (choppy ride today). But it was great weather for the cruise and I think we both had a great time.

After the cruise, we had decided to do a little exploring of Chinatown. We were going to catch the free bus downtown, but of course, were passed by because it was full, so we walked. We didn't really know what we were looking for in terms of a restaurant (yes, eating again, get over it), but we settled on a Vietnamese place because it had lots of people inside, so we figured it was good. Mom had crispy chicken and I had a bowl with grilled pork and spring rolls on vermicelli noodles, so good. But I think mom liked dessert best. It was sweetened black rice (what?) in coconut milk. It reminded us a little of oatmeal because it was warm and slightly sweet, but the coconut milk made it very tasty.

We caught a bus back to the hostel where (YAY) mom's bag had been shipped to us and was waiting on her at reception! Another full day tomorrow- Manly!