Paddy's Market and Chinatown

Monday was a holiday here: Labour Day. So we had a nice three day weekend! Western Australia actually celebrates the Queen's Birthday this weekend as well, but the rest of Australia celebrates it on the second Monday in June. Can you tell I've been working on learning the holidays!?

So since it was a holiday, we decided to check out Paddy's Market and Chinatown. I had read about both of these places in my guidebooks, and our friend Scott told us on Saturday that Paddy's was a great place to buy cheap Australian souvenirs. So of course we had to see what this place was all about!

Paddy's is in a big old warehouse-type building. The top part of the building is full of outlet stores, cheap clothing stores, and food courts. The lower half is... oh boy! It reminded me of being at a Tennessee flea market with 100% more Asian people.

Just like a flea market, there are tons of stalls packed with junk. There are tons of jewelry stores, places selling knockoff shoes and purses, booths full of boomerangs and Australia t-shirts, racks of bootlegged or ancient DVDs, and more Angry Birds paraphernalia than I thought could exist. Pretty much anything and everything you can think of!

Oh yeah, there was also this guy, who may or may not have wandered straight in from the bush to buy a tie (but didn't wear a shirt)!

At the far end of the building is a food market, where there was more variety of produce than we've seen anywhere in Sydney. And for way cheaper too! It was awesome!

There was also a "mushroom man" selling all kinds of mushrooms. We ended up with this bunch of mushrooms for $5, which is crazy cheap! The one wrapped in a towel is a variety I've never heard called a "Bailing mushroom." We're going to give it a try and see what we think. He said they are supposed to taste very meaty, so we're excited to try!

When we had had our fill of Paddy's, we headed back home by way of Chinatown.

Chinatown was quite a bit different from San Francisco Chinatown. There weren't nearly as many vendors but tons more eateries. All the signs were in Chinese - there was no effort to cater toward English-speaking visitors. All in all, it actually seemed like a town you would find in China.

And oh yes, in case you were wondering, the dinner with our mushroom variety pack turned out amazing!!