Down Under



Koalas in the tree

Greetings from Melbourne, Australia!

We have been in Australia for a week now.  We spent a couple of days in Sydney touring around.  We saw so much in the short period of time that we have been here – the Blue Mountains, saw koalas and kangaroos, Bondi Beach, Chinatown, Manly Beach, Sydney Opera House, the Rocks.  Our last day we were to climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge.  You know – that iconic bridge that you always see on TV during the New Year’s fireworks.  But it was POURING rain.  Even though they take people up in all sorts of weather, we all felt that it would be no fun walking in the rain.  It would’ve been like a suicide attempt.  Oh well, that’s life and nothing we can do about that except come back!

Guiseppe and I flew to the Great Barrier Reef where we spent 3 nights there.  It was glorious and everything we expected the Reef to be like.  Just beautiful.  He got to scuba dive, which was his big thing.  I got try it too.  We also flew to a place called Whitehaven Beach.  It is famous for some of the purest and whitest sand in the world – so much so that they used this sand to build the Hubble telescope.  It was so romantic.  Not a soul in sight and a picnic in the sand. 

We are now onboard the ship and Melbourne is our port of call today.  Last night the chef onboard cooked a special Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner just for us at my request.  I know my parents were disappointed that I am not home for the holiday, so I made sure that we followed all the traditions of the holiday here.

Onboard the ship, we have been tasting some interesting wines.  Silversea takes pride in offering something for everyone.  Yesterday I had an inzolia white with my lunch.  Inzolia is an indigenous grape to Sicily and it’s crisp, light and refreshing with flavors of lemon juice and grapefruits.  The champagne is free flowing and we usually finish our evening meals with a glass of moscato d’asti.  It’s sweet like orange blossom with effervescent bubbles.  The bubbles keeps it fresh and not coyingly sweet. 

We miss home, but so far we are having a wonderful time.

Hope all is well at home,

Jennifer

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!   Do you believe it's the end of the first week of January already?  Didn't we just celebrate New Year's a couple of days ago?

I spent this week in the Los Angeles area by Cal State Fullerton.  I came out here to help a friend.  Being in a college town felt like being a desert of good places to eat.  In fact, I was a little worried.  Most of the restaurants around were Jack-in-the-Box, Tony Romas (I remember being taken there YEARS ago by an old boyfriend during my high school days.  At the time and not knowing any better, I DID think that Tony Romas was such a fancy place that my boyfriend took me to that served ribs!).  My girlfriend is more of an Asian food type of girl, so we tried a bunch of different cuisines -- Thai, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese.  Most were uninspiring and basically sated our appetites.  One restaurant we found, turned out to be a gem. 

The place was called Mitsuyoshi Japanese Restaurant.  You know the feeling.  You go to a Japanese restaurant and wonder if it IS run by Japanese and not some American guy who thinks he can roll out an imitation crab stick roll and think it can pass for a California roll. 

We walked into Mitsuyoshi and the women servers were Japanese Japanese.  The clientele was distinctly ALL Japanese.  The food was.........amazing.  At every table was a salted and pickled cabbage.  Like Korean kimchi without red spices.  It wasn't salty, rather caused my mouth to water.  I ordered a super dry sake made by Harushika.  It was fruity and mild in my mouth but felt dry once I swallowed it.  It went perfectly with the cabbage. 

One day for lunch I had the grilled mackeral bento box.  For an oily fish like mackeral, it did not taste oily in the slightest.  Tonight my girlfriend had miso marinated Chilean sea bass.   It was sublime.  I had the chirashi.  The quality of the fish was high and just what I felt like having.  For dessert, we tasted a vanilla ice cream with ground soy beans and caramel sauce (photo bottom).  The soy bean powder had a texture to ground peanuts and actually tasted like peanuts with caramel sauce.  Like a sundae.

What a find Mitsuyoshi was!  We really lucked out with this place AND the 84 degree weather this week!  My girlfriend and I had a splendid time together.  I'm looking forward to getting back home to Guiseppe.  Not the weather!  Just the man and sleeping in my own bed.

Links:

http://www.mitsuyoshi-restaurant.com/