We are in Los Angeles, where we landed at the same time we took off from Brisbane. Our flight leaves an hour and eight minutes from now, 17 minutes before we left Sydney. I actually didn't write anything on that entire flight. I slept some and watched two movies: I, Tonya and Murder on the Orient Express.
There is no Krispy Kreme in this terminal, so I still haven't had a Reese's donut, but I did get a Duncan Donut, and a banana. Our hotel didn't have bananas, so it was nice to finally have one again, and I look forward to getting back to a regular diet.
(Random aside: I've now seen 5 dogs in this terminal. Does everyone fly with dogs now?)
I was hoping to enjoy some Barramundi in Brisbane, since we saw it on the menu a few times and everyone raved about what a delicious fish it is. I kept passing on it, thinking I would have it at the closing dinner, since Roberto had already had the Barramundi at George's Paragon Seafood Restaurant on the river. Unfortunately we had a set menu and Barramundi was not an option.
I also missed out on the Kangaroo sausages at our opening night cookout. We had a lovely dinner at the riverfront home or Rob and Moya O'Donovan in New Farm. They had starters, salads, hot dogs, and really way too much food, but it was all very good. They had some kangaroo sausages, but not enough for everyone and I was too late to the game. To make up for it, I bought some kangaroo jerky at the Sydney airport, along with way too many TimTams. (I had to use up my Aussie dollars, and the TimTams did the trick.)
We had two great food discoveries at Rob's house. One was Solo, which was a delicious sweet lemonade. I ended up consuming a few more Solos through the rest of the trip. The other discover was Pavlova, a delicious, light cake made of, essentially, egg whites and sugar. The cake is topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. I ate too much of Moya's pavlova, and then we had it again the next night when Roberto, Thao, Prof. Makoto Kanda and I went to Rumintha and Celia's home for dinner. (Mako was visiting from Japan, to lecture to our class in Thursday.) Celia even sent pavlova with me when we left, so I ate it again on the third night. (At the closing dinner, I skipped the pavlova in favor of baklava.)
Celia's meal was wonderful. We had cheese and crackers, cut vegetables, and two kinds of oysters for starters. The Sydney Bay oysters were creamy and particularly good. We had some lovely red wine (some of which also went home with me) and some nice sake in honor of Mako. For mains, we had chicken, delicious duck, and the most tender, fantastic lamb chops with a homemade mint sauce. The Australian lamb has a milder taste than what we are used to in the U.S. and everyone loved it.
One evening Thao, Roberto, and I had a progressive dinner. We went to a new restaurant I had read about, the Munich Brauhaus, to get started with some German beer and pretzels. We could have stopped with that, but we also devoured a yummy sausage platter complete with a schnitzel, potatoes, and cabbage.
Our next - and final - stop was Popolo Italian restaurant, which came to us highly recommended by our students. It did not disappoint. We had some ravioli and calamari, but the star of the show was the creamy amazing mushroom lasagna. We were glad to have a bit of a walk from the Southbank back to the Ibis Hotel to help burn off some of those calories.
We are about to board, so it looks like I will have to extend this culinary story for another post.
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