@D4nl1 look what I found in the memory box! This was back in 2003 outside my condo.

So finally I’ve come to my last post about Perth, and it will be the last post for a long long time. Why am I choking up as I type this? I write this post with a heavy heart and shaky hands, the latter probably alcohol-induced from an over indulgent weekend. Oof!

I guess I knew this day would come sooner or later. We sold our apartment in Perth.

I was fortunate to live in a good suburb in Perth just 5mins away from the City and 8mins away from UWA. 25 Melville Parade South Perth was my home for 3 years. I cooked, cleaned, and beautified my little abode. I’m definitely going to miss that place, and so for the last time, “Goodbye House”!

There’s so much attachment to this place besides the apartment. Perth memories were at emotional extremes: great joys, fear, love and lost.
To name a few:

• Experienced alot of life’s firsts such as: Learning how to drive, growing my own herb garden, first hail storm, first taste of freedom, learnt to play golf.
• Partied like a rockstar during my last semester and still managed to emerge a graduate.
• I had a really emotionally abusive ex boyfriend who brought my self-esteem down till the point I felt unworthy
• Lived in serious fear of stalkers and break-ins when I lived alone in my apartment.
• Met an amazing guy who built back that self-confidence and I went on to date for 5 1/2 years.
• Formed some amazing friendships. Like Jono, now one of my best mates.

Now with the apartment sold, the end of a era just feels more real.

Then there was my wheels (well my dad’s)… a 2003 Toyota RAV4, which faithfully travelled up North and down South countless times but chose to die on me once on the Freeway South just 2 minutes from my doorstep.

I loved my license plate (ANG3L) and now it’s out on the market for the taking for those in WA.

We kept it there even after I moved home to Singapore because we were travelling back to Perth quite often and it worked out cheaper to keep it than to rent a car.

So, to my set of wheels. “Bye Car”!

The only consolation is knowing that Perth is only a hop and skip away and that I have wonderful friends there like Jon & Dave still there to keep the memories alive when I visit.

It’s time I closed this huge chapter in my life. And say goodbye to Perth!

The Garden is an outdoor bar/restaurant situated next to The Leederville Hotel on Newcastle Street. I should emphasize NEXT, not IN the Leederville Hotel. For those not familiar, The Leederville Hotel bar is like The Garden’s older ugly sister, same parents but just a shabby, dirty and skanky place to hang.

The crowd at The Garden is far more relaxed, unpretentious and grown up, you won’t find young teens chugging beer and sculling Jaegerbombs here. How? Perhaps by choosing not to serve spirits, and just focus on wine, beers and the exception, Pimms.

The wine list is not huge, and features mostly West Australian wines costing around A$30-50. Beers stocked include Boags, Leffe, and Jon’s highly recommended James Squire.

We chose to sit al-fresco, perched upon high chairs and long wooden tables.

Here’s a sampling of their menu:
lamb kofta with cool yoghurt ($9.50)
Bunbury white bait with preserved lemon aioli ($10)
pork rillettes ($4.50)
Balls of beef and parmeasan with tomato relish ($9.50)
Chorizo and Kipfler potato with rosemary dressing ($12)
Charcuterie plate, crispy pork belly, chorizo, spiced chicken, and lamb kofte – serves 4 ($44)
Crispy baby squid, palm sugar & citrus dressing – serves 2 ($22)

It’s a nice place for knocking back a few beers, and is definitely on my repeat list.

The Garden
Tel: +61 (08) 9202 8282
Open: Lunch and dinner, seven days
Website: http://www.leedervillehotel.com/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?id=101&na

One of the best fish and chippie restaurant in Perth is Cicerellos which sits on the fishing pier in Fremantle. The place is huge and can’t be missed if you’re walking across from the city centre to the harbour.

Don’t expect to be served at this restaurant, think of it more of a glorified canteen just to keep your expectations in check. When you enter the place, your eyes are immediately drawn to the huge aquarium which walls the path to the ordering counter.

You order your food from the counter, pick up a electronic tag, and find yourself a seat at the many tables inside and outside the restaurant. It’s quite noisy indoors, so if you want a bit more peace, quiet and sunshine, eat alfresco. But just be ready to guard your food from the hungry Sea Gulls perched on the fence.

When your electronic tag starts buzzin, it means your food is ready for collection from the counter

The two items always ordered are:

• Traditional fish and chips (premium NZ Hoki) – A$12.60
• Fresh Chilli Mussels – A$22.00

Their fish & chips are wrapped in paper. Salt and vinegar available at the counter. Only thing which annoys me: they charge you for tiny packets of tartar sauce. Come on you can’t have fish without tartar!

I like the fact that the Little Creatures micro-brewery is just down the road too! THAT place has just expanded like crazy! Definitely one of the sexiest looking micro-breweries I’ve ever come across.

Enjoyed the little sense of humour on the signs they placed around Cicerellos. I’m sure you can guess what the words abbreviated are.

Address: Fisherman’s Wharf 44 Mews Road Fremantle 616
Telephone: +61 (08) 9335 1911
Email: info@cicerellos.com.au
Opening hours: 10am to late, 7 Days A Week
Website: http://www.cicerellos.com.au/

While walking round Fremantle, I chanced upon an old record shop. After a bit of reading, discovered The Record Finder is the oldest established record dealer in Australasia, operating since 1966.

The family run business is dedicated to customer satisfaction with friendly staff happy to help in any way. The Record Finder specialises in all fields of music and stock all record mediums, LP’s, 45′s, 78′s, 12″ as well as record equipment, VHS and DVD titles, cartridges and styluses. Records are stocked from all genres and in all categories, new, used, and rare or original pressings.

Spent awhile flipping through old LPs and admiring the vintage-ness of the collections they had stocked. Range was massive, everything from the Beatles to the Beastie Boys, they had it all.

The Record Finder
Address: 87 High Street Fremantle Perth Western Australia 6160
Tel: +61 (08) 9335 2770
Email: sales@therecordfinder.com.au
Website: www.therecordfinder.com.au

Fremantle is one of my favourite suburbs to visit on the weekends. Just a 20min drive from the city and it’s everything I encompass Perth to be: Beach, Seafood, Shopping, Cafe culture, relaxed atmosphere, huge on boating culture, Weekend markets, green lawns and beautiful sunsets.

The city is named after Captain Charles Fremantle, the English naval officer who had pronounced possession of Western Australia and who established a camp at the site. The city contains well-preserved 19th-century buildings and other heritage features. The Western Australian vernacular diminutive for Fremantle is “Freo”

Usual itinerary as follows: Park at the CPP car park. Walk into the weekend market. Order a ham & cheese crepe. Eat and walk through the Farmer’s market. Walk down the cafe strip. Window shop a bit. Check out the Onitsu Tigers at Wonderlust. The Cornere store on South Terrace. Coffee at Merchant Coffee & Tea Leaf cafe. Walk to the beach. Watch the sunset. Come dinner time, walk to Cicerellos for fish & chips or chilli mussels.

My favourite shop in Fremantle is the Corner Store on South Terrace. Love love LOVE everything in there.

Recommendations:

• Little Creatures Microbrewery
• Cicerellos
• Merchant Tea & Coffee Company
• Weekend Markets
• Wonderlust
• Subway DC Clothes
• Micheles Crepe Suzette
• Kakulas Sister grocers
• Corner Store

When I first started blogging back in 2003, the community was pretty small. So it was pure coincidence I came across Karen’s blog just about the time she had her first born. Fast forward 6 years and now she is at baby number 3.

We soon became readers of each other’s blog, and finally after years of online correspondences, we finally met last November.

Karen is a super mum living in Perth with her hubby and 3 sons Callum, Sean and Liam. Her blog is beautifully written about her life down under where she writes a lot about parenting, fashion, and everything in between.

We met at the park near the city and had coffee/tea at a café overlooking the Swan River. She is such a lovely lovely person, and was glad we managed to meet up.

Karen, Sean and I at the Park. Second photo is Sean’s idea of a funny face

Here’s her blog post of our meeting!

On the return route from Swan Valley, there were a couple of places we wanted to check out before we called it a day. One being the Cape Lavender café off West Swan Road. Initially, I envisaged a place with organic-designed wrought iron gates, a long driveway lined with thick bushes of lavender on either sides and the road slowly opening up to fields of purple lavender.

Forget that, it was just short dusty drive to a small building with a few lines of lavender bushes in the front. Even the lavender on the café tables were plastic!!

Only saving grace was the little café which served up lavender scones with raspberry jam and lashings of clotted cream. Wasn’t hungry at all, but I really wanted to give it a try.

Verdict: Felt like I was eating potpourri!?!

Beside the café was a little gift shop with all sorts of lavender gifts and edibles such as jams, chutneys, honey and preserves. All of which you can sample before you buy.

After speaking to the lovely lady at the counter did we realize that the Cape Lavender farm is actually in Margaret River, and this place was just an outlet.

Cape Lavender (Swan Valley outlet)
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday, 9am to 5pm
Address: 6 Cranleigh Street (off West Swan Road), West Swan
Tel: +61 (08) 9250 7711
Website: http://www.capelavender.com.au/cape-lavender-swan-valley.html

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Margaret River is the chocolate factory. Now before you start imagining a place like Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, get rid of that thought immediately. You won’t find no chocolate lake or copious amounts of candy on the walls and hanging off trees.

Let me help you out here and manage your expectations. It’s just a huge shop with a shelf full of chocolate, and a back room with a few heavy machinery churning melted chocolate in cauldrons. But don’t let the appearance discourage you, the chocolate is good!

Entry is free, and so is the sampling of chocolate pastelles in dark, milk and white from huge bowls located at the entrance of the shop.

The Margaret River factory was opened in May 1999 by two friends who had no experience in chocolate, retailing or tourism but did have a passion for chocolate. Chocolate is one of the most luxurious, indulgent and universally loved foods in existence and has a rich history dating back more than 3000 years. Several hundred years after this the Aztecs christened it as the “Food of the Gods”.

It may be a small factory, but they do have a lot of flavours: Dark, milk, white, sugar free, rocky road, sprinkles, biscuits. Gourmet hand-made truffles are displayed in the glass cabinet: hazelnut toffee, Turkish delight, strawberry cream. One of their award winning flavour is dark chocolate with candied ginger.

You can view the chocolate making process through a glass window. The factory also has a café serving sandwiches, coffees, chocolate fondues, fudge cake, brownies and ice cream sundaes.

They did so well, another outlet in Swan Valley was opened a year later for people like me who didn’t want to venture that far for a piece of heaven.

The Margaret River Chocolate Factory
Address: 5123 West Swan Rd, West Swan 6055 WA
Tel: +61 (08) 9250 1588
Opening hours: 9am – 5pm
Website:www.chocolatefactory.com.au/

It was Friday night which meant the boys were game for a big night out!

Having left Perth a few years ago, I’m not up to date with the latest trend spots in town. Once thought of as the cool and hip nightclub, Metros, is now apparently quite trashy. And favourites such as Luxe on Mount Lawley are finding hard not to be out shined by newer, swankier underground bars like 1907.

1907 is a world class restaurant and bar housed in a 100 year old rag trade factory, situated in the hub of Perth´s former fashion district. 1907 is the result of an idea to evolve Perth´s inner city, maintaining its old charms and incorporating cutting edge design to match a world class dining experience provided by our enthusiastic team of hospitality professionals.

Jon said this place makes an amazing Passionfruit & Vanilla Martini at A$18 a pop. Verdict: Expensive but worth it! One of the best tasting Martini combination EVER! And of course such magic juice had to be replicated at home no? So I saw the ingredients on their menu online and hope to try it out one day.

Passion fruit & Vanilla Martini
Fresh passion fruit and home-made vanilla syrup shaken with a large serve of our very own local Wild Swan vanilla vodka, Licor 43 and pressed lemon juice. Served straight up with a vanilla sugar dusted rim.

And as you can guess, we didn’t stop at just 1.

1907
Address: 26 Queen Street, Perth, WA 6000
Tel: +61 (08) 9436 0233
Website: www.1907.com.au
Opening Hours: Bar (Wednesday, Thursday 5pm – midnight, Friday 4pm – 1am, Saturday 5pm – 1am)
Restaurant (Lunch – Tuesday to Friday from 12pm, Dinner – Tuesday to Saturday, from 6pm)