Art, Pizza, and Scotch

Monday exceeded my expectations. I saw and did many different things within just a few hours.

I slept in late, and when I got up, Laura and I walked to the Art Gallery of NSW. Shane and Laura live right on the water, so our choices to get there were to take a cab, take a train, take a ferry, or walk. We opted for walking and got the opportunity to walk across the Sydney bridge. Although it was only about a mile to get there, it took much longer than expected. Google Maps has a hard time locating your exact position in a big city. It takes some time to get the hang of ignoring the little dot that indicates where you are.

We walked through a beautiful park on the way. When we made it to the museum, we sailed right in. Like many other museums on my trip, the Art Gallery of NSW is free. The art was from many areas of the world and spanned a large range of time, but had more Australian art, as you can imagine. Australian art looks very similar to American art to me. As I learn more about the history of Australia, this makes sense to me. The gallery also had a few works by Picasso, Monet, and Giacometti.

After the gallery, we tried to check out a bar that's located on a top floor of a hotel. It's know for the view, but wasn't yet open for the night. Instead, we went to a bar called Frankie's where we drank local beer and had wonderful pizza.

After about an hour, my friend Matt met us. I went to high school with Matt in Oklahoma. He's living in Australia with his wife and baby, and working for a university in Sydney. It was nice to connect with someone from high school in such a random location.

After another hour or so, Shane and one of his colleagues showed up. We tried more different kinds of beer and ate three more pizzas. My favorite was a sausage pizza that had truffle oil on it. Yumm.

Monday night is live music night at Frankie's and this week was no exception. The band was okay, but they were so loud that most people in the audience were wearing earplugs. Luckily, Matt gave me his only pair to protect my ears.

After a lot of yelling over the band, we decided to go on to another bar owned by the same management as Frankie's. It's called The Baxter Inn and it specializes in bourbon, whiskey, and scotch. They are located in an alley and down some random stairs. It reminds me a lot of a library as they have rows and rows of bottles and a rolling ladder to reach them. This place was amazing. Definitely my favorite in Sydney so far. It was a great end to a great night.