Weekend of excess part II
At this point I would like to say that before you read this post you need to read part I
As Rachel so kindly pointed out in the previous comments, all that food still managed to have a negative impact on my stomach and my sleep (Happy now Kirk?). We tried to go to sleep, but for awhile we had to contend with just rolling around holding our imploding bellies owwwwww… I think I too will blame the beans and Sangria, they are very likely scapegoats and the most probable suspects…. The night of bad sleep, did mean that we were forced to get up and get moving as we were running really late. So we jumped into the car with RnR and the dogs and headed for Chinatown. We wanted to see lion dancers and the parade. This was good in theory.. but we had a lousy spot at the end of the parade route and if the dancers weren’t pretending we weren’t there HELLO!! then all my nice photographic angles were taken up by other “real” photographers who got to stand inside the barricade or useless parade attendents. Bastards. I did manage to take a nice photo of balloons.
The photographs I wanted most however where of the stilt dancers. Ok, hands up. Who thought it was a good idea to jump, do the splits, forward rolls and chuck people in the air whilst wearing traditional costumes and HUGE STILTS. Who ever that was is one crazy SOB but also brilliant, kudos to you. See the guy in the orange, his legs are crossed and his feet AREN’T TOUCHING THE GROUND, that’s crazy. I LOVED the little tackers, they were exhausted by the time they got to us, but they still performed and smiled, of course all my photographs of them are taken around some stupid photographers fat head. *humph* Oh of course I am not bitter at all…
The Huge balloon firecracker turned out to be the most prophetic part of the parade though.
My friend Rachel, she LOVES the lion dance, Imean what’s not to love? A troupe of highly trained kung fu dudes stomping around china town in the quest for little red packets and lettuce, and iceburg lettuce at that. Cool. But, I thought that the use of hands (By the way you are caught 
) was cheating.
But of course this is not just any lion dance, it is for the Chinese New Year, so I guess you have to have firecrackers (See I told ya!). Not just any firecrackers, but really, really long ones. I of course was not scared, and I was up for anything, so whilst they were pushing the crowd back I fought my self to the front line. They lit the firecrackers and the smoke and the noise started.
Just like me the Lion was real brave too, jumping in the face of loud, noisy danger. But just like me, being pelted by bits of debris also made the tough kung fu lion want to cower as well. But I managed somehow tocontinue to snap whilst I was pelted. Then we thought it was over and the “big one” went off. BANG. It made me splutter. Um where was I? That is when I was not so kindly brought back to chinatown, by the little old Chinese guy next to me. He was pointing at me and laughing, that is SO NOT NICE! It wasn’t my fault I was covered in grey powder and the left over red firecracker packaging.
By now I bet you are asking WHERE IS THE FOOD! This is where I say, keep your panties on it’s next 
Rachel wanted to try out Daniang Noodles, which I belive she said means Big Momma Noodles?
They are a chain from China, which is always run off it’s feet. I don’t know if that is because they are truely busy or just truely slow. The one lady taking the orders appeared to have a huge fast discussion in Chinese with every person that placed their order.
At least they give you your side dishes straight up. We got the jelly fish salad, but my photo seems to have disapeared into the bit stream.
We started off with Pork and Crab soup buns. They were ok, but not very soupy. Casey wasn’t very impressed. I think there was too much crab.
Then we had the beef potstickers, these illicited alot of mmmm’s why did we only order one plate to share? hmmm. But we weren’t going to attempt a second order or we would never get home. LOL.
Then we had dumplings in a hot and sour soup broth. The dumplings were nice and the broth was ok, but not that special.
We then had the beef soup with homemade noodles, Rachel informed me that this is the same one that will make Kirk or Reid melt into a bowl of soupy goodness. The beef was tender, not to fatty, tender and not chewy or stringy. The noodles were ok but I expected more pull. The broth was nice, it came with the requiste star anise but I prefer the sechuan noodle soup at Mother Chu’s.
We walked and strolled and chatted. Before too short an amount of time though it was time for RnR to take us home so they could take their much longer drive back to Cowra. Aw so sad!
We had a fantastic time and can’t wait to do it again. Soon! oh yeah, very soon