Sydney: Eating at Rockpool and Drinking at the Rocks

For our 1st wedding anniversary, Tim and I treated ourselves to a fancy dinner at Rockpool Bar & Grill, set in a cool art deco building in Sydney's CBD (photos below).  Sadly we neglected to take photos of the food before we dove in, but I can sum up: pretty freaking tasty... Tim said his aged steak was the best he'd ever had, our Aussie oysters were awesome, and the passionfruit pavlova we shared for dessert was to die for (and Tim and I are not usually 'light and fruity" dessert lovers).  I found the recipe for the pav online and am planning to give it a go, so expect to see it over at my other site.

 

The following night, our last in Sydney, we walked over to the Rocks for some bar hopping.  Established in 1788, the Rocks is a former portside slum under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but is now home to shops, restaurants and lots of old school, oddly named bars.

We started out at Fortune of War, which claims to be Sydney's oldest continually operating pub, established in 1828.  They have all sorts of documentation on the walls to prove it, including an ancient looking liquor license.  The bar is a down-home place stuffed with tipsy old guys and locals, which is funny since it's sitting across from a Gucci store.  Hmmm.

Our second stop was another historic pub, Molly Malone's Bar in the Mercantile Hotel.  Full of both Aussie and Irish drinkers, it was also where we spotted and failed to properly capture the world's most amazing mullet (see behind Tim in the photo below).  A rippling party of curls in the back, yet all spikey business in the front, it was a sight to see:

While walking around, we found these invasive cane toads, painted and turned into coin purses.  Awesome.  I thought some of my college buddies would appreciate this, having watched the funniest documentary on cane toads back in our college days: 

Our last stop was the historic Hero of Waterloo pub, which we later found out was connected to a tunnel used for rum smuggling and involuntary recruitment of sailors during colonial times.  Now it's a cozy pub with wood fires, live music and lots of beer.

After our mini-pub crawl, we wandered past the docks at Circular Quay and attempted to take some cool night shots of Sydney, somewhat successfully.  Turns out it's hard to take a non-blurry night shot without a tripod.