Market Saturday

Yesterday was dedicated as market Saturday. I’ve been hearing a lot about Sydney’s street and flea markets, so I wanted to spend a day checking them out. Sarah and I took the bus into town and ventured first to Paddy’s Market. It reminded me of the flea market I used to go to in Florida with my grandparents. You could find everything from clothes to cookware to luggage to souvenirs. They also had a separate area for fresh produce. The main part of the market wasn’t too interesting because it was just a bunch of stalls selling the same thing at different prices, if you paid close enough attention. However, the produce was interesting to wander through. I found something called a sugar banana, which I’ve never heard of. I bought one—I was totally undercharged as the sign said $3.50 per kilo and he only asked for 10 cents—and tried it. I can’t even describe how weird it was. I felt like I was eating something banana flavored that had a grainy texture like it had been rolled in sugar. It also had a bite of sweetness at the end. I’m not sure why anyone would choose to pay more for them.

Pretty view of the city

Fountains near Darling Harbour

Sugar Banana! (look how fat it is)

We spent near two hours at Paddy’s, which is set underneath a full-service mall, before heading over to the Rocks. I didn’t quite realize that we were on the complete other end of town when I suggested that be our next stop, but oh well. We ended up walking through a really pretty park on the edge of Darling Harbour that we stopped to take pictures it. There was a carousel and giant playground as well, so it was swarming with families. We also passed by the outside of the Chinese Garden of Friendship, something I plan to see eventually.

When we finally got to the Rocks, there market was just starting to close, so we hurried quickly through the stalls. The Rocks is more of an arty market with many paintings, ceramics, and decorative purses on display. It was more fun to look at the items on sale here though.

The Rocks Market

It finally got too cold for us though between the wind chill and the sun going down, so we went to the nearby Pancakes on the Rocks and had mimosas and pancakes for dinner. It was fairly decently priced compared to everything else in Sydney, only $6.95 for a stack of two pancakes with butter. It kind of reminded me of iHop. It seems to be some kind of phenomenon here as there was a huge line out the door. I wanted to buy some of their pancake mix because I haven’t seen a mix anywhere else, but I didn’t want to carry it around with me the rest of the night, so I passed. I did find pancake mix at the store today though and it was $7.50 for a small bottle! It might have been cheaper to buy it in the Rocks...

Some building...

A Night Out

We got ready to go out after dinner yesterday because nearly everyone from our group had agreed to meet up at O’Reilly’s, a popular bar downtown. Our family wanted to take us out though, so it was really awkward because we had no idea what to expect. It was warm out, so we were both wearing shorts but then it sounded like our host dad, Ajay, called the pub to check if there was a dress code. It turned out there wasn’t. The place they took us seemed kind of like a country club. They referred to it as a “pub” and said it was only of the oldest clubs in Fiji, around since the colonial days when only the British were allowed inside. Nowadays, it’s a member’s only club. It seemed like a nice place. Our family bought us a couple of Tribes, the local wine cooler, to try. The Tribes are mixed with either vodka or bourbon; we tried the cola, raspberry and watermelon, pineapple, and lime flavors. Everything was good except for the cola, which was way too strong.

The country club was really only for the older men though, so after finishing our drinks, we moved on to O’Reilly’s. It was kind of awkward (which was the theme of the night) going to a nightclub with a couple the age of our parents and a 20ish woman who is their housekeeper and was trying to keep an innocent image in their company. O’Reilly’s was where we tried the pineapple tribe though, and, soon after, we found our group. They were dancing on the tables and counters in the corner of the dancing and smoking section of the bar. It’s so weird that you can still smoke inside in designated smoking areas here.

Inside O'Reilly's

We kind of separated from our family to join the group and I felt bad because they awkwardly stood in the corner for about forty minutes before asking if we wanted to move on to another bar. We wanted to stay though and, thankfully, they agreed to let us take a cab home. I was just glad that they were getting the chance to go somewhere more their style. Apparently, after they left us they took Nina to another club too.

A lot of the people in our group were drinking and dancing, but I preferred to sit down with the artists from the University of the South Pacific who had come out to meet our group. Dancing just isn’t really my style. It was too loud to talk inside though, so I mainly just ended up sitting and watching. Some people were getting a little out of hand. Sure enough, after about an hour, the bar was really crowded and some of the people in our group wanted to move on to a different bar down the street. Of course, we couldn’t find everyone. We spent about twenty minutes looking for three of the girls who had just disappeared together. They finally showed up after we had given up and moved on to Club Islanders down the street. However, that bar was extremely skuzzy and didn’t appear to be the safest, so we were only there for about ten minutes before leaving.

When we all got outside, Lindsay just took off running across the street and into a park. She was literally sprinting away from us for no apparent reason. It was probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen someone do. She even claimed she was sober, but that definitely couldn’t be true. Someone sad she was mad about something but one of the artists found her near the sea and putting two and two together we figured out she was homesick. It was a mess though. We couldn’t really try to bring her back to the group because we were afraid she would take off again, so we had to leave her be, even if it was alone.

A lot of the group moved onto Temptations, a newer club across from O’Reilly’s, but I was ready to call it a night. Deirdre and I didn’t want to call a taxi though, so we asked a couple of the artists how safe it would be to walk home along the seawall where we had taken our walks with Nina. It was really only a ten-minute walk and our host family has told us the area is rather safe, but we wanted to check. The artists didn’t agree that it was okay for us to walk alone, so two of them came with us. I ended up talking and walking with William, who said he had never met a foreigner before. It was bizarre to me. I understand he’s never left Fiji and since he’s from a small village on the North Island, I can see where he would be isolated, but still. I can’t imagine not knowing the diversity that comes along with acquaintances from other countries. I tried to think back to the first time I had met someone born in a foreign place, but I couldn’t. I guess I take the diversity of the United States for granted.

It was about 2:30 by the time we got home last night, so we passed out right away, which is a good thing because we had to get up at nine this morning to run errands with our family. Etnis, the son, needs new glasses, so we went with him to the optometrist and helped him pick out new frames. Unfortunately, he didn’t go with any of our suggestions. It’s creepy how similar the glasses shop seemed to Lenscrafters back home. The paint colors were a little more islandier, but the set-up was ridiculously familiar.

After the glasses hunt, we dropped Etnis off at the bus stop and headed to the market. The markets are huge here. You can buy everything from fresh fish to vegetables. I immediately noticed the absence of apples though. It’s so weird to me that they don’t grow them here. It doesn’t seem like apples would need that unique of a climate. Nothing is packaged in anyway though, so it also seems kind of unsanitary. Even when you buy a whole fish, it’s just shoved in a non-properly sized plastic bag with the tail sticking out. I dubbed this “fish in a bag.” We also went to a supermarket in town, which seemed incredibly busy. I was amazed at the prices on some of the things too. Peanut butter seemed a little bit more expensive here, but nectarines were ridiculous at $17 per kilogram. Apples were almost $4 per kilogram. I guess that is truly the difference of living in a small country though. In the United States, we don’t even notice when things are imported because our economy is strong and the sheer amount of products we import absorbs some of the cost. We were encouraged to pick out ice cream for after lunch from their Tip Top collection. They had some bizarre flavors like boisonberry and hokey pokey, but we stuck with the slightly more normal cookies and cream. The cart was completely full when we were done shopping and I thought it would take forever to bag everything, but the check-out woman and bagger were amazing fast. You can tell they’ve taken it down to a science. It was much more productive than the US, which is good because they were really busy.

The inside of the market was huge

He had so many eggs

Bananas are a huge deal here

I don't even know what these are

The fish head was just chilling on a table

This was still moving while we were there

They have a lot of pink toilet paper

Lunch was Chinese food, which was incredibly weird for me. The cho mein was really good though and I’ve actually started eating rice. My taste buds are definitely becoming less picky. As long as things aren’t too spicy or fishy, I seem to be able to handle them well. I’m still not big on vegetables though. I feel like my food adventures won’t necessarily continue in Australia though because I’ll be buying all of my own food and I’m not going to want to waste money on things I won’t like. The ice cream afterwards was a good choice too :)

We went running after lunch along the sea wall, which is this little paved path that has been put up alongside a wall that keeps the tide from running into the road. I ended up running all the way out of Suva town proper. One thing I noticed is there is an extraordinary large amount of seaside parks here. You would think the land would be devoted to beaches or beachfront property, but it’s not.

Our farewell dinner was tonight. It was held at USP. All of the girls in our family – Sangita, Nina, Shigi, and Rigi – came with us. There was entertainment underneath their performance pavilion, including a rapper as well as the college’s band, dance group, and singing group. Dinner was good too… I had fish again, unbelievably. They made us dance with the performers after the whole group sang the traditional goodbye song, so not cool.

I pretty much passed out after we got back home and had some ice cream.

Italia: Day Ten

We got up super early this morning, at like 4:45, so that we could hop on a bus and go to the airport to catch our flight into Florence. The problem was that even with getting up early, we couldn’t get to the airport because our bus didn’t show up. We ended up taking four taxis so that we could catch our flight on time. It was especially urgent because only one flight goes out of Cagliari to Florence per day and we wouldn’t be able to see the city if we didn’t make it.

 After the one hour flight where I sat between two older businessmen, we checked in Hotel Albion and dispersed into the city. Pam, Chelsea, Becky, and I headed to an underground mall that while similar to the one in Montreal, was actually really ghetto. I didn’t find anything in the mall to buy, so we continued on toward the San Lorenzo market. The stalls were really a repetition of each other, but I managed to find a cute dress, a magnet, a postcard, a jacket, and some cigarettes for Daniel. I wish I could have bought the absinthe that I saw, but I wasn’t sure who I would drink it with and I can’t exactly take it back to the U.S.

The river that runs through Florence 

We stopped for lunch near the side of the market at a restaurant called Za-Za. I ordered the chicken breast and was really surprised by how bland it tasted once it arrived. I also had some potatoes with it. I’ve been craving chicken because of the lack of it since we got here, but the meal definitely did not quench the craving. If anything, it only made it worse because I wanted something that tasted good. The meal was outrageous too and had a 2.50 euro cover charge per person. I swear, the system with which they charge for food in Europe is so unusual.

After lunch, Pam bought a postcard and in our effort to find a post office for her to mail it from, we ended up stumbling upon the Duomi and taking pictures of it. None of us wanted to wait in line to go inside, so we turned back because Pam had lost her postcard by then. We headed back to the hotel so that Becky could unpack her suitcase and Pam could take a nap. Chelsea and I grabbed some delicious gelato along the way and I actually got a really good waffle cone. The man who worked in the shop was really nice too. We made conversation about Jeni’s.

The Duomi doesn't even look real

The bathtubs they have all over Florence

While we were hanging out in the hotel, I looked around on the internet for some clubs that we could go to. Florence has a club that actually sounded really cool, with five floors and different music on each one. It had an outrageous cover charge of twenty euros though, so I decided it wasn’t going to happen. A lot of the other clubs had similar cover charges or weren’t open on Mondays. In fact, only one was free and it was pretty far from our hotel. Monday is such an awkward clubbing night.

We tried to go to the Boboli Gardens after everyone woke up, but the gardens closed at 6:30 and no one wanted to walk all the way there. I tried to find us a bus route, but we had trouble. We ended up going back to the hotel for a little while before we got bored and decided to wander around.

Pam, Chelsea, and I walked along the river, which was feasible once the sun went down a little bit. We took a lot of pictures and walked along the quaint Italian streets. Florence really didn’t feel like home though. We found a market and bought some fruit and Barcadi Breezers then walked down the street drinking them until we found a cheap café for dinner. We all ordered sandwiches and ate them out on the patio before going back for desert. We were charged extra because we ate at the restaurant. I’ll never understand all of the hidden charges.

The expensive gelato in the center of Florence - 15 euros for a waffle cone!

Dinner of sandwiches

A bridge in Florence

After dinner, we wandered the streets of Florence in search of Absinthe, but it sounds like most of the stores that sell hard liquor close at 7PM. It was pretty much a wild goose chase from going where one person told us to where the next person said we would be able to find it. We ended up at some African picnic/dance party that may or may not have been political in orientation. I didn’t really feel like dancing and none of the guys were cute, so I didn’t really want to stay. But I did because Pam and Chelsea were having a good time dancing with the guys.

When it was time to go, Pam suggested that we take a picture with all of the guys that we had been dancing with. They had been teaching us moves and Pam and Chelsea had been sharing theirs, so a sort of camaraderie was formed. They didn’t speak English very well though, so it was difficult getting them into a picture formation. One guy kept doing weird hand signals too, but he would wait right until the guy was taking the picture to do them, so we couldn’t stop it.

Once the pictures were over, we went to leave and Pam noticed that nearly ninety euros were missing from the front pocket of her shirt. She immediately asked who had taken it, but obviously, no one confessed. We looked at the pictures that had just been taken and you could clearly see a guy reaching toward the same pocket the money was in. Everyone in the picture, his friends included, started blaming this guy and Pam got into an argument with him. A bunch of other people who had been sitting under some of the tents set up for the party came over to see what the commotion was. They also started arguing that Pam probably lost the money and there’s no way one of the guys took it because he’s one of them, one of the “hardworking people”. It all pretty much sounded like bullshit but we didn’t know what to do. Pam was really flustered and me and Chelsea were just standing on the sidelines, upset.

The guy that Pam accused gave her twenty euros and another guy came over and kept saying that we should be friendly and was trying to keep the peace while saying that Pam was wrong. Another girl came over and started arguing that no one was at fault, that they were just trying to have fun and we shouldn’t bring bad vibes into their party. She seemed kind of drunk while she was arguing, but she knew both English and Italian, so it made the most sense to pay attention to what she was saying. She gave Pam another thirty-five euros in an attempt to get us to stop worrying about the money.

We were still trying to figure out what to do. It sort of seemed like Pam wanted to report the theft and I had seen a few police cars drive by before everything happened, so I started to walk out to the street near the plaza to see if I could find another. Just as I started walking, one drove by. I ran over to the car with my hand in the air, trying to get their attention. The woman who spoke both English and Italian realized what I was doing and started charging after me with a beer bottle in her hand. Apparently, it was quite the sight.

I managed to get the police’s attention though and they parked their car nearby. One of the officers only spoke Italian though and the woman started into her side of the story in fast Italian before I even had the chance to explain what was happening. She put her beer bottle down on the ground while she was having the conversation with them.

Once the other officer walked over, I was able to tell them what happened, but I have no way of knowing what she said to them. Essentially the officer just kept repeating that we needed to be “friendly, friendly.” He said there was really nothing we could do except go to the police station and file a report in the morning, and even then, he didn’t really see what that would do since we’re just tourists. Pam was freaking out because she didn’t have her passport on her and she was afraid that they would ask her for it if she filed a report, but I tried to calm her down while conversing with the officer. The whole time my legs were shaking. I hate talking to figures of authority.

It was ridiculous though because it was like he looked down on us because we weren’t citizens and felt no need to help us whatsoever. I never realized foreign police were so rude. As much as I hate the local police and all that I’ve been through with the law, this has made me respect the way they enforce things in America a little bit more. On top of the lack of help, the officer proceeded to lecture me about trying to get their attention. He said that running after a police car and calling for help are things that you only do if someone is getting hurt or killed. He made it sound like their job was basically to drive around writing tickets and preventing murders. I wanted to fight back against the lecture, but I just tried to thank him for his assistance with the smallest amount of sarcasm possible before walking away. I needed to leave to control my temper. I can’t stand when people are rude and unhelpful.

We spent the walk back to the hotel trying to calm Pam down and figure out where we were. We were actually pretty far away when this all happened and we ended up being twenty minutes late for the meeting. I think Kimberlie and Dr. Fink understand though.

Italia: Day Six

Since we stayed out so late, I decided not to get up and run in the morning, which may not have been the best choice, but I do need to try and sleep when I can. I got up at nine and packed my bag because today was our last day in Torino. The group met and walked to a local market together to look at their produce. After admiring the large amounts of fresh fruit, Pam, Chelsea, and I met up with Patti (Loredana’s Italian friend) and wandered around the clothing side of the market. I purchased a corset and tank top that were pretty cheap in price. I also found a bottle of white nail polish that I wanted to get because the color is in style. All of the people I interacted with in the market were very nice, although we were warned ahead of time to be wary of pickpockets. It was somewhat difficult to communicate that I wanted to try things on though.

We spent the rest of the day wandering in and out of stores on the Garibaldi strip, a large collection of fashion stores. Everything was pretty expensive though, so we just looked and tried things on. In a cheaper clothing store, we all tried on matching dresses in different colors and took some pictures. Then we went to an underwear store where we tried on fruit-decorated boxer briefs and took more pictures.

Trying on our fruity underwear

After buying postcards from a small, touristy shop, we sat down at a restaurant called Happy Days for lunch. We all got the pasta and it was amazing – possibly the best that I've had so far on this trip. It’s funny though because it was really just shelled noodles in a tomato sauce. The bread at the restaurant was really good too.

We met up with Becky and Loredana after lunch and stopped into a bar to get some drinks and sit on the patio. I got some weird strawberry and vodka concoction that was very strong and tolerable, but not my favorite. It was a little too fruity for me. Pam got a Amaretto and Coke that was really good though, so I vowed that I would try it at our next stop.

We kept walking toward the river and went back to the park in the center of the city that we keep visiting to rent a four-person bike/car (I don’t know what the technical name for them is but they're covered vehicles powered with your legs, like a bicycle, but that look like an old-fashioned car). We had trouble on some of the hills, but we managed by putting our brute strength into it. It helped that four of us were peddling. At one point, we picked up some random guy who spoke very little English and dropped him off at his bus stop like we were a taxi service. We also steered down this massive hill though and spent the whole way down screaming and having the Italians stare at us. At the bottom of the hill there was even an amusement park-style bump that Becky lost her bag on.

Our rental bike/car

 We wanted to go ziplining after we returned the bike, but the stand by the river was closed so we didn’t end up getting the chance. It’s a shame though because the experience would have only been seven euros.

On our way back to meet the group, we stopped for another drink at a different bar. This time I got the Amaretto and coke. I decided I didn’t like it very much toward the end of the drink because the Amaretto is really sweet tasting and not my style at all. I sucked it down though and proceeded to feel a little bit tipsy for the rest of the afternoon. I’m just glad the glasses we got at the second bar were two euros cheaper and double the size of the first.

We met the rest of the group at a chain ice cream shop, GROM, near our hotel and picked up our luggage before boarding a bus to the airport. I’m really surprised by how big the Torino Airport is. I was expecting a dinky little three-terminal airport, but it’s actually quite nice and decent sized. Even our plane is bigger than I expected. We did have to take a little bus out on the tarmac to board though, which reminds me of 
travelling to Ireland.

Boarding the plane to leave Torino