Today, the city boasts a distinct skyline, a vibrant city centre, and several neighbourhoods, each with its own character and distinctive feel. It is the capital of the huge state of Western Australia - a state so big that had it been an independent country, it would have been the world's 10th largest in terms of size! It is as big as the total area of the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy, Portugal, and Denmark combined.
One of the major streets in downtown Perth is St George's Terrace. It has a ceremonial arch at one end, and is lined with tall buildings of diverse vintage. We walked down St George's Terrace all the way to Barrack Street and eventually arrived at the Ferry Terminal on the Swan River. This is where people take ferries to suburbs across the river, or to Fremantle. At the Ferry Terminal is the modern-looking Swan Bells - it houses the only bells cast in England that have ever left there. We then walked across through the Supreme Court Gardens, and resumed our exploration of St George's Terrace, crossing Government House along the way.
The weather was perfect for such a walk - it was spring in the southern hemisphere, the air had a certain crispness to it, and the sun shone through brilliantly. On that lovely day, our meandering walk eventually took us to the Perth Railway Station, and after crossing the tracks, we found ourselves in front of the Arts Museum of Western Australia. We took pictures along the way and then, in need of some retail therapy to comfort our tired feet, we made it to the area between Hay and Murray Streets - where there are numerous shops, stores, boutiques, and cafes.
Having made light work of lunch, we were really eager to have a decent "home-taste" meal for dinner and in this pursuit, we walked all the way across to Chinatown in the Northbridge neighbourhood and found a popular Vietnamese restaurant where we ate to our heart's content.
One of the joys of waking up at the Medina every morning was the breakfast we used to have at its Metro Cafe. We have to admit that we were not adventurous at all in our choice of breakfast, relying on a staple feed of fruit salad with yoghurt, toast and coffee, but it was just so wonderful! Our day would begin with a stint in the hotel gym followed by a longer stint at the hotel cafe!
On the next day - our second in Perth - we decided to walk across the Esplanade, a large patch of green lawn by the Swan River, to the Ferry Terminal to enquire about trips to Fremantle and Rottnest Island. Having acquired the details that we needed, we set out towards King's Park. We never quite made it there, spending instead long lengths of time along the river while taking Bollywood style photographs. In the afternoon, using our morning perambulations to justify the indulgence, we made it back to the market area and spent the entire afternoon on shopping. Along the way though, we had lunch at Maoz Vegetarian - our favourite felafel place from Europe. For dinner that night, we made it to stylishly upmarket 9Mary's and had our fill of desi food.
This was the day when we spent a lot of time walking around the heritage streets of central Perth where there are several buildings with character and architecture that dates back to the Art Deco period. We also saw the very ornate His Majesty's Theatre and felt tempted to try out each of the numerous coffee bars that lined these streets.
The next day, we went to Rottnest Island. Read all about it here.
Links:
Homepage: www.vixabs.com
Travel page: Wanderlust
This trip:
- Next page
- Previous page
- Pictures
No comments:
Post a Comment