The Rocks & Gold Class

We ventured into 'The Rocks' today before going to see The Dark Knight. The Rocks is the oldest part of Syndey (possibly Australia?) and has some great cafes and pubs. On Saturday's there is an outdoor market and live music in the area. We didn't have an agenda, other than to putz around, but we did manage to find some neat walks off the beaten path.

After The Rocks, we made our way into the CBD (about 20min walk) to watch the new batman series. Watching movies here is a little bit different than in the US - 1. Normal ticket prices are about $17 and 2. All seats are assigned. For this particular movie, we decided to step it up a notch and watch it in the more exclusive and stylish 'Gold Class'. While the Gold Class is even more expensive ($38 per ticket - Yikes!), it does has smaller theaters (40 people), comfy seats (see pics below), private restrooms, and waiter service - with restaurant style food & drinks.

We got to the theater about an hour early in order to enjoy the Gold Class lounge [a separate lounge so you don't have to hang out with the rif-raff - :) ]. After a pre-movie drink, we ordered some snacks to be delivered during the movie and headed into the theater. We were then spoiled forever. The chairs are huge, have footrests and can recline to a near horizontal position - oh yeah and have a table between them for food and drinks!

I thought the movie was good, but maybe not worth all of the hype...although Heath Ledger did do an amazing job as the joker. My biggest complaint about the movie - Batman's voice, horrible.

The Gold Class is a world all of its own, but with those ticket prices I don't think this will be a common site for us (as much as we may want it to be). That being said, we have talked about going to see Wall-E in Gold Class when it gets released here in late September (yes that's right 3 months after being released in the states).

Moonlight Cinema

After we purchased a car we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. We walked over to Centennial Park (5 min walk) to check it out. While we were walking we stumbled across something called Moonlight Cinema which happens during the summer. Basically there is an outdoor movie in the park everynight starting at 8:30. Guests are encouraged to pack a picnic to have during the movie. This sounded excellent to us as it turned out to a beautiful day. Tonight's movie was Bee Movie - voice starring Jerry Seinfeld. We packed a light picnic - using some fantastic wedding presents (thanks Katie S. and Kathryn W.) - which consisted of a tomato/rocket/parmesan salad and some beer & wine. We got to the park early to get a good viewing location and enjoyed our picnic while watching the crowd. This also gave us a chance to use our Snowgum chairs - which are great and stayed pretty comfortable even after 2+ hours.

We enjoyed this so much that we will most likely be back to check out The Darjeeling Limited when it shows in a couple of weeks.

New Year's Eve in San Francisco

On our way to Sydney we had to stop in San Francisco, so we decided to spend a few days and celebrate New Year's eve. We stayed at the Harbor Court hotel on the Embarcadero. This boutique hotel is part of the Kimpton lineup, which we really like (mainly for the free happy hour, but the service is also top notch). Our room had a spectacular view of the Bay bridge, which allowed us to watch the fireworks from our room window.



While we didn't have an agenda in SF, we managed to get quite a bit of last minute shopping done before our journey (thanks to the closeness of the Westfield shopping center). On our last day in SF (Tuesday - Jan 1st), we checked out the movie Juno. It was a great mind release from the impending 14 hour flight. I thought the movie was kind of a cross between Napoleon Dynamite and Knocked up...which is not a bad thing.