Ok, here are some thoughts about Perth and its attractions after out little vacation.

  • Perth's CBD (where we spent the bulk of our time) is really great. It has a wide variety of shops and a free transit system in the form of three buses which drive all over the city centre and surrounding areas. Outstanding.
  • Perth's water must have been really clean, because I'm sure nothing could survive in it. After showering every morning I was mmmm chloriney fresh. We ended up having to buy bottled water for our hotel rooms rather than drink the tap water. No wonder all the restaurants put lemon slices etc into their water.
  • The food was fantastic, but very expensive compared to what I'm used to. That may not be a Perth thing - we don't exactly go out for tea in Sydney or Melbourne very often, so we only have good ol' Albury to compare to.
  • Like many big cities, finding a proper sandwich bar or bakery was nearly impossible. I like to choose what I want on a sandwich or roll and watch 'em make it in front of me, not choose some hours- or days-old sandwich from behind glass. Such shops were extremely hard to find (we found only two or three over the whole time we were there).
  • The Perth Zoo was excellent - the best place we visited. Lots of great animals and a fun walk around.
  • Adventure World looks like the sort of theme park I'd like to go to. I'll never know for sure, because it's not open Tuesdays or Wednesdays - the days we had set aside to check it out. Great!
  • The Aquarium of Western Australia (AQWA) ranks right up there with Sydney's aquarium, in that it's ridiculously overpriced for what you get. $25 each to spend 20 minutes looking at fish? Even the sharks weren't that exciting. Until aquariums start feeding live animals to great white sharks in front of an audience, they simply won't be worth the money I irrationally continue to pay.
  • Freemantle had markets and ... er ... I forget what else. Oh yeah - heat.
  • Rottnest Island didn't have markets - it only had heat. About the only attraction that Rottnest held for me was the prospect of seeing a Quokka. We saw two - hiding in a bush behind a fence. I was better off at the zoo. We ended up paying an extra $40 to get an early ferry back to the mainland because the place was unbearably hot and tedious.

More insights as they come to mind.