We used to live just around the corner from Regency Café for many years and while we’re trying to eat healthy, this Greasy Spoon managed to make us fall in love with it on first glance. Heck, I’m saying love, but it was more like an obsession! Located just a five-minute walk from Pimlico tube station (Victoria line) or St. James’s Park (Circle and District), and under 15 minutes’ walk from Westminster tube station (Jubilee line), this café still celebrates the 1940s style that was fashionable when it was opened in 1946. The outside tiling is art deco (even though not the grand style you might be accustomed to from architectural milestones like the Chrysler Building, more the robust type that you know from the former headquarters of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, adjusted for a small corner café). It attracts a lovely mix of builders from […]
Orchid Festival, Kew Gardens
We’ve just come back from the Orchid Festival in Kew Gardens, which has started this weekend and will last until 5 March, so go get your tickets, don’t miss out on this great exhibition of fabulous flowers! Not that Kew Gardens wouldn’t already be awesome enough without any festivals or special events, but this Festival really tops everything we’ve seen so far at Kew Gardens, the variety of flowers on show and the dazzling beauty of many of these flowers is just mind-boggling. Kew Gardens have done a great job at curating this exhibition. We were thoroughly blown away by it, but it seems to work just as well for families and children, old folks, and even experts in the field, overhearing some of the conversations of bystanders. It’s also nice that you can venture into side rooms where ferns, carnivorous plants (the humorous label is “not so vegetarian vegetables”; […]
Rose Bay to Watsons Bay Walk
From Circular Quay it’s only a bit over ten minutes by speed catamaran to Rose Bay, the starting point of one of the most spectacular walks we’ve done in Sydney. The walk follows the coastline from Rose Bay to Watsons Bay all of about 8km distance with only a few exceptions, when the path is a bit further inland. More than half the distance is through light woodland, so that you are not fully exposed to the sun, and there are several cafes and picnic stops along the way. From nearly all points you have beautiful views of the city and the harbour and of the many ships and boats in between. The vegetation is abundant and we saw many lizards, cockatoos, kookaburras, rainbow lorikeets, parakeets, butterflies, and other colourful birds and animals. After about two hours and a half, despite many stops to shoot photos […]
The Baxter Inn, Sydney’s Best Cocktail Bar
We met up with a few friends at The Baxter Inn, yesterday, a basement whiskey honky-tonk of great style and true awesomeness, half way between Darling Harbour’s Sea Life Aquarium and Pitt Street in Sydney’s CBD, and equidistant to Wynyard and Town Hall train stations in 152-156 Clarence St. The little brother of Darlinghurst-based Shady Pines Saloon, The Baxter Inn opened only a few years ago, but has already become the established star of the Sydney bar scene. The entrance is well-hidden in a dark backyard of an industrial building. Often the lines of admirers stretch all the way to the street, though, giving good indication of the direction of the entrance. The atmosphere inside is dominated by dimmed warm light, heavy wooden furniture, and – the center piece of the bar – a giant, beautifully backlit wall of whisky, whose upper shelves are only accessible by scrolling ladders, so […]