DAY 7 PERTH CITY
We initially planned to visit some of the city’s main attractions in the late morning. However, due to the strong “shopping magnetic force”, we ended up shopping for cosmetics and health products at a shopping mall and a pharmacy, Chemist Warehouse, nearby the city center.
After the unplanned shopping, we headed towards St Mary's Cathedral and spotted some little cages along the way. We wondered whether these cages are meant as a resting place or are just artistic decorations. If you happen to walk pass this area and decided to snap some photos, beware of the birds on the trees just above the cages to avoid any unwanted incidents.
We only paid St Mary's Cathedral a short visit because a mass was about to start.
It suddenly began to drizzle and we quickly made our way towards the CAT bus stop which is not far away from the cathedral. Being too early for lunch, we hopped onto the CAT bus and took the “bus tour” around the city by travelling from the first stop to the last stop. During our visit to Perth City, we fully utilized the free CAT bus to get to some of the main attractions such as The Bell Tower, Elizabeth Quay, Hay Street, etc.
Tips: CAT (central area transit) buses run within the Free Transit Zone (which is the central area of Perth City) and are free of charge. The CAT buses are categorized into 4 colors for different routes. For more details, you can visit their website at https://www.transperth.wa.gov.au/Timetables/CAT-Timetables.
After touring almost half of Perth City, we got down at the bus stop nearest to Jamie’s Italian at William Street. We couldn’t decide whether to dine here or go for something cheaper before the trip as well as when we were passing by the restaurant several times during the “bus tour”. Finally, we decided to go for our first dining experience at a world-renowned restaurant to make our trip more memorable!
Jamie’s Italian has a great dining atmosphere with good services as we enjoyed our meals. Its signature porchetta is superbly tasty as it melted in our mouth! This is definitely the best porchetta we have ever tried and the only one which melts. Thumbs up to this fabulous porchetta!
We also ordered 2 plates of pasta since Mr. J loves pasta so much and wouldn’t leave an Italian restaurant without having them! Jamie’s pasta is freshly made daily in contrast to some restaurants which sell instant pasta bought from the supermarkets. The portion of the porchetta and 2 plates of pasta are just nice for 3 persons.
After the delicious lunch, we continued our exploration around the city. We walked towards the nearby attractions, London Court, The Bell Tower and the busy streets of Hay Street and Murray Street.
We almost missed the entrance of London Court as we didn’t expect a normal-looking shopping mall facade to be the entrance. We were actually expecting a more outstanding entrance. Nevertheless, you will feel as if you are transported to London the moment you stepped into it. Filled with the elements of London, you can spend your time shopping or enjoying a cup of coffee at one of the cafés.
The next stop, The Bell Tower!
We weren’t really interested go up The Bell Tower to enjoy the city view from its observatory deck as it is quite expensive. Hence, we proceeded towards Elizabeth Quay which is just about 5 minutes of walking distance away.
Elizabeth Quay is a nice place to check out and also a good place to have a short walk while enjoying the breeze! From here, you can see the Swan River dividing the city into two sides.
Our next mission which probably comes in second place after Jamie’s Italian is to try the famous Apple Strudel of Perth. Our friends that have visited Perth strongly recommend trying it and we also heard that many Malaysians actually bought it as a souvenir back to Malaysia. We took the CAT bus at Elizabeth Quay and traveled to Northbridge for the apple strudel.
No queue was sighted at the bakery and the street was as quiet as an abandoned town. We noticed plenty of pubs in the area and guessed this place is probably only “active” at night.
Since there was still about an hour before the bakery closes, most of the shelves are already empty but the apple strudel was still available. The apple strudel is made up of many thin layers which are crispy and fluffy at the same time. It isn’t too sweet and the amount of custard filling is just nice. The generous amount of apples certainly complements the custard filling well. We gobble up the apple strudel while it was still fresh and it is just too good! It was unfortunate that our flight back to Malaysia is scheduled at midnight. Else, we will definitely buy a few more as souvenir.
Tips: Corica Pastries is just a bakery and it doesn’t provide any seats for you to eat the apple strudel on its bakery. Even the restaurants in the area put up notices not allowing anyone to have apple strudels at their premises.
Genting in Malaysia is like Crown in Australia. We made a trip to Crown Casino just to have a look and check out the place before heading back to our apartment in Maylands to collect our luggage (we already checked out but we stored our luggage in the storeroom).
After leaving Crown Casino, we bought our dinner (roasted chicken thigh and strawberries) from Woolworths supermarket and collected our luggage. We then headed to Elizabeth Quay Bus Station to catch Bus No. 380 bound for Perth International Airport.
Tips: We bought the DayRider which provided us with unlimited travel within a day since we actually traveled twice between the city and Maylands (apartment → city → apartment → city → airport). In addition, the DayRider also covered our bus fare to the airport which definitely helped to save some money. Bus No. 380 isn't an express airport bus but it is comfortable and has racks to store your luggage.
Due to flight schedule changes made by AirAsia 2 months earlier (afternoon flight → next morning flight), we decided to sleepover at Perth International Airport. Surprisingly, the domestic terminal has quite some number of seats suitable for lying down (and sleep) compared to the international terminal. The seats are what we needed for a short nap before checking in at 3.30am.
That summarized Day 7 of our Perth itinerary. Click the links below to check out the rest of our Perth trip.
Day 1 & 2 - Margaret River
Day 3 - Fremantle, Lobster Shack, The Pinnacles, Lancelin
Day 4 & 5 - Caversham Wildlife Park, Perth City, Rottnest Island
Day 6 - Swan Valley
Day 1 & 2 - Margaret River
Day 3 - Fremantle, Lobster Shack, The Pinnacles, Lancelin
Day 4 & 5 - Caversham Wildlife Park, Perth City, Rottnest Island
Day 6 - Swan Valley
We hope you enjoy reading about our experience in Perth, Western Australia. Feel free to drop us some feedback or ask us more about our trip. We will try to help out as much as we can. 😊
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