Catch-ups, City, & lots of Candy

Another adventure out to the city (lots of walking and super tired) with the friend, RA.

Also a quick catch-up because I haven't spoken to her in ages and we needed to buy presents for a couple of friends, too.

Spent the entire day out, and it was super tiring (walked so much!) but was worth it. Also spent a lot of money, but enjoyed the day thoroughly :) It feels great to not have trials on your back, and knowing that you 'have time to spare', instead of being constantly plagued by the guilt "I could and should spend this time studying..."

Also brought my camera out with the same 50mm f/1.8 E series Nikon lens that I used yesterday, just to see if there were any photo opportunities and such. Really hoping to bring my camera around with me more often, because there's always things to take photos of.

We started off by just wandering around Town Hall and buying some cards from Kinokuniya (One of my favourite stores). Then we thought we'd check out Happy Labs and the other shops in Westfield. Ended up buying myself a fair share of food (Hawaiian salted caramel popcorn, made in the USA), which has a photo at the bottom.

We then legged it to the MCA to check out their store.

After spending a great deal of time thoroughly combing through the MCA's store, we thought we'd go for some lunch/brunch/food so we went off to Starbucks because we couldn't resist the temptation of feeling hipster. Also their matcha frappuccino's are very impressive.

Sadly, no photos, because we felt that we were too minorstream for the typical hipster-stereotypical photo of a Starbucks drink. So we just enjoyed it. Also ate a nice pink cupcake (I asked for chocolate, but that's okay). Yeah... That was our lunch.

Wasn't sure where to go to next, so we went off to The Rocks to check out the small stores there, and walked into 'Sticky', where they hand-made rock candy!

Apologies for the reflection in the glass :(
They actually roll massive tubes of it into very, very small strands.
Believe me when I say that it. is. amazing.

I'm not going to lie. It was very, very impressive.

Definitely taking my family and friends here next time I'm in the Circular Quay area, because it's something quite worth the see. And the rock candy tastes fantastic, too! :')

There's no way I can depict their talent and skill in photos, so I really recommend you go check it out.
Their work-speed is insane.

 Also managed to buy a jar myself, because I just couldn't resist. A bit of a sucker for cute little lollies. (Image at the bottom)

That mass production, wow.

Eventually we left and stood around contemplating where else to go.
We thought maybe we'd go check out Lindt Cafe, or the shops around there, so we walked 1.6km to Darling Harbour to continue our adventures.

It seemed like a long distance at first, but we figured
1. We have plenty of time.
2. We ought to burn off the mass amount of sugar we'd consumed at 'lunch' and along the way at various candy stores.

Besides, when you're with a good friend, I can assure you that the estimated 20 minutes did not seem that long. Saw this really cool street art-piece on the way there, which we've strangely somehow failed to notice, despite living in this city for 17 years. There's actually a lot in the quaint city of Sydney that we've yet to discover. Hopefully I get to do that more often after HSC.

After eventually making it to Darling Harbour, we decided there was nothing there, so we walked another distance to Paddy's Markets and had a look around there (to no avail). Eventually we wandered over to Market City and finally made our final purchases.

Headed back to Town Hall and went to the Dr Who Pop-up Store (!!!) and also Lord of the Fries for a late-evening snack because we started to get hungry (considering we had a medium latte and mini cupcake for lunch...)

Not sure exactly how far we walked today, but we spent a good time doing just that. Not even sure if I recounted the story right, because we actually just walked around the same places over and over, going from Town Hall to Circular Quay, and then back to Town Hall. But it was a nice day. :)

LOOT;;

I'm not usually a big fan of caramelised popcorn, but this was too good to resist.
Happy Labs, Westfield.

Really cute mini-rock candies.
Sticky, The Rocks.

 Aaaaand also one more photo because it looks so pretty to the eyes :')