Sydney Luminous

To celebrate Vivid Sydney we headed straight for McMahon's Point last Friday night on our way to Coogee to see what Brian Eno had done to the Opera House for the duration of Sydney's winter festival of music, light and ideas.

We stayed long enough to see a rich suite of colour waves and patterns sweep over the sails and decide it was rather all rather wonderful and not kitschy at all.







We were very lucky to see Miss Zoe D. (almost 11 months old now) quite a bit this weekend, along with Sydney Clare and her dad S. First stop was Adriano Zumbo's Cafe Chocolat in Balmain. In our three hours there we all overdosed on Adriano's delectable chocolate confections and intense full bodied coffees. Miss Zoe felt right at home in this hip little French style cafe and was particularly struck with the low slung red glass chandelier.

I was amazed by my ability to scoff down a "It's not a hamburger! ...It's a macaron!
Created to mirror the flavours of a banoffee pie, one of Adriano's old school favourites. the "Hamburger" was created in honour of the many customers who commented that Adriano's macarons looked like "tiny little hamburgers". Two giant chocolate macarons filled with dulce de leche gelato and dark chocolate sauce, rested on a bed of banana and caramel rice pudding, finished with a sprinkle of bitter chocolate soil." http://adrianozumbo.com/cafemenu.html

Next venue was our favourite local hero, Barzura's at Coogee Beach where Miss Zoe was able to sample a bit of everyone else's tagliatelle, poached ocean trout, risotto and crumbed wild mushrooms and goats cheese with baby eggplant and red pepper sauce, http://www.barzura.com.au/ which she did with great gusto.

In between these dining marathons Rob's Mum had a lovely stay with Miss Zoe at Glebe while we had a quieter time doing our thing at Coogee Beach: long walks every day in the bright clear winter sun and a long, expensive afternoon at Bondi Junction picking up some more stylish gym gear to suit our new memberships at SCHC.