Inner City romp

The aim of today's excursion is to discover what the inner city has to offer. We started off at Glebe, the suburbs where the "alternative" lifestyle advocates hang out. We walked from one end of Glebe Point Road to the other, and the conclusion is: people in Glebe are into alternative therapy, with at least 3 shops specialising in this pursuit, offering the oil, candles, massage and tarot reading, as well as countless organic shops/emporiums (the GNC LiveWell shop unlike any other I've ever seen), reading (of note is the famous Gleebooks), and eating, with every other shops a "funky" cafe.

First stop for us was Sonoma Bakery Cafe, well known as the producers of one of the best bread in Sydney. True to form, by the time we got there (around 2pm) most of the produce had sold out. We picked up the Polenta loaf ($5.70), which was dense and had great texture and great crust, but lacked the sourdough taste I adore. It tasted better after the first day too!

The next shop of note, aside from all the organic stores, was British Sweets and Treats selling chocolates and candy from overseas. For a "British" store, there were a lot of American products, but I didn't see anything from our overseas trip except for Reese Peanut Butter Cups.

Eventually, we got to the Glebe Markets, our main reason for going to Glebe in the first place. Well, this place was crowded! There were a lot of 2nd-hand clothing, all manners of jewellery and "gypsy" style clothing, as well as a few budding designers hawking their wares. It was more interesting watching the people (all dressed in the latest fashion) browsing the shop and the things they buy, than actually getting anything for myself.

Our Glebe soujourn over, we hopped (ok drove) over to the "quiet" side of Rozelle, where we stopped at Herbie's Spice to browse their collection. I've heard and used Herbie's so often, I really wanted to check out the shop. It's a quaint little shop filled with all their herbs. The owner,, offers an explanation of everything. Almost next door is the barn cafe, a cafe cum deli selling lots of organic produce. This place has been reviewed by SMH before, and was immensely popular. Ironically they were selling some Herbie's Spice at 20% off.

Crossing Victoria Rd, we arrive at the more popular end of Darling St, and squealed in delight that we got to Belle Fleur Fine Chocolate just before they closed. The shop was really beautiful, with chocolate figurines filling the shelves and a glass counter with at least 30 different kinds of chocolates. We got an assortment of individually handmade chocolate - very expensive at $99/kg. My verdict? They are very good but nothing really stood out. Because we spent so long here, we just caught the end of the Rozelle Market. Very similar to Glebe, except on a smaller scale. There seemed to be a lot more 2nd hand ware. We took a quick walkthrough, most of the good stuff were either gone or packed away.

We didn't have time to try anything at Gelateria Caffe 2000 but their gelato offering was just like what we could get from Italy! We wondered into a few organic shops, which all seem to be selling Sonoma bread anyway! The best and cheapest one we found was About Life, a very modern store that was in the style of the barn cafe. Their grocery line is much more extensive though. We picked up some Cyclops European style organic yoghurt in banana flavour. (See my review). I was happy to see they stocked the lovely Brassarie Bread (the subject of a future excursion), as well as Sonoma and Common Ground Bakery. A few doors down was The Fine Food Store selling similar but a bit different things, including some cool chocolate stocks.

It was close to 5pm when we finished our browsing. What to do between 5pm and dinner? Hit Birkenhead Point to waste an hour. We thought everything would be closed so we were only going to browse around at Coles. To our surprise, the DJ Warehouse was open until 6pm so we spent an hour browsing its ware. For the uninitiated, the warehouse is very large filled with everything you will normally find at a DJ. We had no trouble browsing (or more like digging) for an hour, but didn't come out with anything worthy at the end.

We headed to Balmain for an early dinner. We've been trying to satisfy our Thai craving for awhile, so we settled on the slightly upmarket Pinto Thai for dinner. (See my review here). Stuffed and satisfied, we drove back to the non-trendy part of Sydney, ready for another adventure in the near future.

Info

Sonoma Bakery Cafe
215A Glebe Point Rd
Glebe NSW 2037
Phone (02) 9660 2116

British Sweets and Treats
85 Glebe Point Rd
Glebe NSW 2037
Phone (02) 9660 9912

GNC LiveWell
53-55 Glebe Point Rd
Glebe NSW 2037
Phone (02) 9660 8144
Website

Gleebooks
49 and 191 Glebe Point Rd
Glebe NSW 2037
Phone (02) 9660 2333
Website

Glebe Markets
Glebe Public School
Glebe Point Rd
Glebe NSW 2037
Every Saturday, 10am-4pm

Herbie's Spice
745 Darling Street
Rozelle NSW 2039
Phone (02) 9555 6035
Website

the barn cafe
731-735 Darling St
Rozelle NSW 2039
Phone (02) 9810 1633
Website

Belle Fleur Fine Chocolates
658 Darling St
Rozelle NSW 2039
Phone (02) 9810 2690
Website

Gelateria Caffe 2000
650 Darling St
Rozelle NSW 2039
Phone (02) 9555 6032

Rozelle Markets
Rozelle School
Darling St (near Victoria Rd)
Rozelle NSW 2039
Every Saturday, 9am-4pm

About Life
605 Darling St
Rozelle NSW 2039
Phone: (02) 8755 1333

The Fine Food Store
595 Darling St
Rozelle NSW 2039
Phone (02) 9810 2858
Website

Birkenhead Point Outlet Centre
Roseby Street
Drummoyne
NSW 2047
Phone (02) 9181 3922
Website

Pinto Thai
315 Darling St
Balmain
NSW 2041
Phone (02) 9555 6745