Chat Thai Haymarket, Sydney

Chat Thai

20 Campbell st

Haymarket, Sydney 

I read about this place before we left, so going there was always the plan... We knew that there would be a wait (which I hate), so we left before we were hungry, good idea! We arrived, the wait was around 20 minutes, once in we noticed that there were only 2 items that didn't have meat... My husband is vegetarian, and usually we love Thai because he  can always get a pad Thai, with tofu, there was no tofu on the menu!!! When we ordered we asked and there is a tofu option, just not advertised anywhere...

We ordered the pork balls and dumplings for starter, a vegetarian pad Thai, chicken pad Thai, crispy pork belly in red curry sauce and chicken with cashews and chilli jam, every meal was amazing... Honestly worth the wait! The service was mediocre... But as you walk away you are already planning your next visit!

Hello Kitty Diner Chatswood, NSW

Hello kitty diner

Chatswood station interchange 

This has recently opened and it feels like they haven't quite got it together...

We only had to queue for 10 minutes, it looked much longer when we were leaving... 

I was hoping for a booth, but we got the bench, it was fine though, just over the moon to be there!

You order before you sit, we ordered the maple pork belly burger, tofu burger, slaw, fries, hot chocolate and cinnamon waffles... The savoury food was amazing... Pork belly burger blew me away! The only downside was that the waffles were a bit meh, despite being the cutest item we ordered ;) the main issue was the food service, we got my hot chocolate, minutes later my burger, then my waffles, minute later marks burger, 5 minutes later we asked where the slaw and fries were 'on their way' finish our burgers, a couple minutes later get the slaw and another minute, fries, not cohesive at all...

Prices were pretty average, though lots of people complain that it was expensive...

SeaWorld Gold Coast

II have such mixed feelings about the Gold Coast Seaworld, after blackfish I definitely wouldn't go to a U.S. one, but we have a fondness for the one at the Gold Coast... 

Not too many animal enclosures, touching the stingrays, checking shark bay, and the indoor and outdoor penguin enclosures were our favourite... The dolphin show reminded me too much of blackfish, so I was quite sad, but everyone else loved it...  Go 15/20 minutes early to ensure a good seat...

The 3d sponge bob movie is very loud, but a good 8 minutes... We caught the teenage mutant ninja turtles meet and greet and their live action show, kids loved both! Nickelodeon land has some great small kids rides, go there first to avoid queues, they got long!

The Viking flume was awesome, but 45 minutes of queuing time, should probably have gone there first! The creatures of the deep indoor and outdoor exhibit was good, preferred the outdoor...

We spent around 5.5 hours here, the longest in my adult life and the longest with my kids... Definitely their favourite park of the three...

Pancakes on the rocks

I got the chance to catch up with my pregnant sister while away, and she had said she was craving pancakes, so I suggested pancakes for dinner... I'm not a huge pancake person, but have been known to enjoy the odd pancake parkour visit...

It was very reasonably priced, and when they came, the bananarama pancakes were huge! Thick and massive buttermilk pancakes with banana and butterscotch syrup... The kids LOVED the butterfly pancake, not enough for dinner though, they shared mine, and also some of marks chips... Mark had the pizza, don't order pizza at a pancake place! Bless! 

Gringo Loco Cantina

Walking past here the menu looked good... 

On arrival we definitely over ordered, the best thing about that was being able to try a lot of options!  It's not a tex mex Mexican spot, it's proper, delicious Mexican, reminiscent of the spot we went to in nyc, not quite as good, but still damn good... The two vegetarian salads were amazing, pulled pork burrito, spicy beetroot dip and chicken nachos were all so good! Their sangria was delicious too! We spent double what we normally sold on dinner, but we basically had a meal for everyone to take home...

Vapiano Gold Coast

Vapiano is one of our must do dinner spots every time we are in the Gold Coast... They hand make their pasta, and you basically watch them make/cook your dish while you wait... Which is all well and good, but most importantly, it's delicious!  They have a good kids menu, with large kids portions, 1 serve enough for my two kids... And same with the adults serve... Not too expensive, definitely worth every dollar! 

We ate here twice, and will definitely be back when we return to surfers paradise...

Wet N Wild Gold Coast

In the past year wet n wild has made a good effort to give the little kids something to do, with the addition of the junior slides to Buccaneers Bay... Our kids LOVED these! 

Amazing and a lot of  big thrill slides, none of which I was able to try, a combination of fear and opportunity... Family favourite Mammoth Falls is awesome, but queues get long, go there straight away! 

Warner Bros Movie World

Get an early bus! They get packed and the queues to get in are long! Most theme parks open their gates 10-15 minutes before official opening time, it's worth going early!

There is something to do for every age range here, big thrill rides, medium rides, and lots to do for tiny humans... We took our kids (4 and 6) on the wild Wild West ride, I knew it could go either way, and it went pretty badly! Which made the next half hour very chilled...

There are often things happening on Main Street, the batmobile, a live action batman catching the bad guys, Marilyn Monroe singing... Characters around to take your own or get professional pics by... 

The Gold Coast Chevron Renaissance Towers

We came to the Gold Coast for some school holiday fun! Remind me to never come here on the school holidays again! It's crazy... Chaotic... Queues for everything! But it's also warm, and fun, and an awesome holiday is an awesome holiday regardless...

We are staying in Chevron Towers Renaissance, which was completely booked 9 months ago when we bought our tickets! But I remembered a couple on airbnb that had an apartment here, so we not only got a room, but we got it for $100 less a night! Woohoo! The apartments have everything you need and aren't outdated, a pretty good location, and most importantly an indoor and outdoor lagoon walk in (shallow) pool.. With small kids, this is the bomb!

In the school holidays the lifts have their moments of stopping, the maintenance man said there should be 6 lifts in each tower instead of 4... You can hear your neighbors, and if on a low floor, we were 13, the street traffic and on weekends, street drunks...

Empire State tattoo expo

Empire State Tattoo Expo

The reason we booked NYC for this time of year, my husband is a tattoo artist and we live tattoo culture... A few of the artists at the expo have been brought to Melbourne through the studio he works at, so also a good opportunity to say hi... The community here is so full of lovely people, everyone wanted a chat, was really cool to speak to so many lovely humans...

Grabbed a Magnolia banana pudding and a Maoz veggie salad on our way home, it was getting late, we were hungry and I couldn't do a wait for a table... The salad was delicious, wish we tried it earlier!! And the banana pudding was sooooo good! I have used their recipe to make it before, in pleased to say it wasn't that different! 

Day 9

It isn't really a day, it's packing and re packing, trying to make 30 extra kilos fit into our bags, and dreading the check in staff telling us we can't be a few kg over... I hate that united changed their bag policy... I wouldn't really mind buying an extra bag today had we been a lot over, but not for 5kg... And in the end we didn't have to, the check in staff were phenomenal... We were quite a bit over and they were really cool about it...

A long journey home, and absolutely worth it to see my kids at the end...

An amazing busy trip, I think it's going to take a few days to process the whole thing... But not today, today I used all my energy loving my kids, and I have been up since 3.30, and just holding out for one more hour so I can go to sleep!

Shake Shack

Shake Shack

We had to come back here, their burgers (meat and vegetarian) were just too good! 

Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum

As you enter Brooklyn Museum right now, there is a massive Kaws piece, love it!!! It's only $16 suggested donation and the staff made sure we knew we could pay less, but we felt that was a great price for the honour of checking out the sneaker and Basquait exhibits...

First things first, sneakers! This is a really good look at sneakers from the early 1900's through now... Some really beautiful sneakers in there... Lots of gems of knowledge, and a few pieces that we own too... Walking around one corner we saw an interview with an old friend from London, Kish, a massive sneaker head... Was dope to see!

Next Basquiat, the notes from

Basquait exhibit... This was a really random collection, some of it was amazing, and some so random, which gives some insight into the artist... Was definitely interesting, even with the one and two line pages... They had a shop up there so we grabbed a piece for our son... 

(We bought this for our sons room)

Ancient Egypt, if any museum has an ancient Egypt exhibit, I'm in... I can't get enough of ancient Egyptian art... It was a nice little collection...

Something that I LOVE about NYC is the sneaker culture... People keep their kicks fresh, clean... I don't know how in this city, the sneakers I wore already need a good clean... But I spend a lot of time looking at people's footwear on the subway and it seems to be across the board, it is not like this at home... 

I remember the first time we came here, everyone was wearing Nike uptowns, all white (I actually got married in a pair of these), now there is a bigger range, but a lot of Jordan's, and limited Jordan's, it warms my heart...

Home to chill a while, start the packing process! And it is a process indeed...

Day 8

I tried melatonin last night and except for a massive explosion sound at 4am (scared the crap out of me, heard people on the street freaking out about it, shouting what the F was that? Etc, I waited ten minutes to hear sirens or something, nothing happened so I went back to sleep) I slept 9 hours last night! I needed it, all that broken and short sleep was taking its toll on me!

Looked at our shopping this morning and our sons pile was significantly less than my daughters, so a quick stop at champs and toys r us to sort that out... Final got another smores frappe, trying for days, everyone was out! They really need to put signs up, would hate to calculate the time I have spent queuing to be told they were out! 

Off to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Rise of the Sneaker Culture Exhibition... We have seen some great hip hop exhibitions over there...

Day 7

Woke up late after going to bed late... Today we were headed to SoHo and then zigzagging through to the Lower East Side... A bit of shopping, some delicious treats from Dominique Ansel again... The weather was quite cool, perfect for walking around, taking it all in...

Dropping out shopping home and then off to the Brookyn Hip Hop Festival: Dummy Clap Film Festival... We had tickets to Fresh Dressed at HOA in Bed Stuy... Our hopstop directions took us into some dubious streets, it's that weird feeling, we didn't feel like we were going to be mugged, but it also wasn't comfortable... Got to the screening early and I was starving (had a small fruit salad on the go for lunch), we spotted a Mexican restaurant and went in... 

Tepache 

361 Halsey St 

Brooklyn

I grabbed 3 tacos, fish, shredded beef and fried pork, they were amazing! They don't do Mexican food like this at home... So delicious! 

Fresh Dressed screening at the Dummy Clap Film Festival, Brooklyn hip hop festival

These guys were running late, set up was a bit of shambles, technical difficulties etc, but it was a very laid back crowd, everyone just chatting and waiting... Eventually the film started, it was really good, well researched, a pretty thorough look at hip hop fashion coming from the 70's until now.. April Walker from Walker Wear was there, she did a Q and A afterwards with Mickey Fresh, was really cool to hear from someone who lived this, at the forefront of hip hop fashion in the 90's...

Back to Manhattan, home to FaceTime the kids and off to bareburger again, a 20 minute wait, but we were hungry so we just grabbed a couple hot dogs and fries from papaya dog... Needed to chill... It feels like every day has been 3 days, so many activities...

Hedwig and the angry inch

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

The day the tickets for Darren Criss' season went on sale I tried to buy tickets for our trip, my husband is not into theatre, so when I went through check out and the tickets for the seats I wanted came to $400AUD, I let go of my hopes to see it... It felt like a lot of money for something only one of us would enjoy... I had a moan about it on Facebook after walking past the theatre on our first day... One of our favourite humans from London proceeded to organise us Comp tickets, so, so good!!!

We went to the box office to pick up, I was so pleased to be there, I didn't even mind where we sat... We were in row K in the orchestra, I honestly couldn't believe our luck! As the cast entered I could see every centimetre of Darren Criss' beautiful face... A great show, funny and sad, still stoked I got to see it! And my husband enjoyed it too after all that...

Hoping to go to Johns for pizza, it was closed, we were tired and grabbed a few dollar slices on our way home...

Serendipity 3 and fifth ave

Heading down to serendipity 3 for some lunch and a frozen hot chocolate, 20 minute wait for a table with Dylan's candy conveniently located, got some sweets for my mum and aunt looking after the kids and came back to our table... While waiting our close friend from London called to say she organised us FREE tickets to Hedwig and the angry inch! My day has been made and I haven't even had my frozen hot chocolate yet! 

Lunch was the second worst meal of the trip, such an average meal, and the frozen chocolate wasn't even on point... My husbands veggie patty looked like a frozen one you but from the grocery store...

Fifth ave

Mild shopping, just a few stores we wanted to check out... Then towards home, the heavens opened and there was some amazing relief for about 5 minutes, then it was back to hot and humid... Went home to cool down, shower and get ready for the show...

Guggenheim Museum

Guggenheim museum 

We usually check one museum per trip, and I have wanted to come here since our first visit 9 years ago! Our plan was to start at the top and walk down after our immense walk through the incredibly humid Central Park to get here (we got so turned around in there, tripled our journey time!)... The architecture it almost worth the fee, the art is all modern, mostly installations, some of them were amazing, but quite a few neither of us really connected with... A great museum in any case... My kids would have loved the art here, made me miss them...

Day 6 The City of New York Museum

I slept for 8 hours! Woooohaaaaa! Up and breakfast on the go... Heading up to the museum of nyc to see the journey through hip hop exhibition... Took the subway up to Central Park North, walked through the park and realised we were about to pass by the birth place of hip hop (106th and Park) so we walked over, got some pics, shame you can't get properly in to the graffiti wall of fame unless it a weekend, amazing HARLEM piece on the outside by TATS crew, worth the walk just for that! 

Back to the museum, on entry we were told about the other exhibits, and there was an exhibition on activism in New Yorks history... It was sooooo good... At home I attend rallies for equal rights, for refugees, the LGBT community, our indigenous people's rights, so this was really cool to see...

Then off to the exhibit we were here for, capturing hip hop over the 70's through 90's, firstly this was amazing, a highlight of the trip...

Joe conza took photos before my time, these were basically from the birth of hip hop right through to the 80's, probably my least favourite part of the exhibit...

Martha Cooper truly captured a moment of time in hip hop, focusing on bboying and graffiti, her photos really take you there... They feel so alive...

Janette Beckman took photos of the artists of the time, and they are ridiculously good... If I could afford it our house would be full of them...