Tag Archives: Sydney

Second Sydney Foray

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Today was an adventure inspired by a couch. Our lack of a couch. Our really really sad uncomfortable lack of a couch. Let’s just say that a week spent sitting on a deflating air mattress writing blog posts and editing pictures and replying to emails will make you determined to acquire a couch. I’m not saying this is the biggest problem I’ve ever had, or that you should actually be sympathetic, but a couch is the last item we need to really make this place our home, and thus this story revolves around a couch.

I found Ben a standing desk on Gumtree (Oz’s rather nice equivalent to craigslist). We scored a tv/media cabinet from the side of the road. We found a real fridge (with freezer!) on Gumtree. We bought a legitimate real-person bed. Our landlords are loaning us a tiny old 13-inch tv with bunny ears. We hauled some $10 Gumtree bedside tables on the bus to put in our bathroom. IKEA kitchen stand and tall desk chair have both been situated in the kitchen and office. All that’s left? Couch!

The couch we found on Gumtree, the couch of our dreams ($100, comfy looking), is located in Mosman, a tiny little community on the top of some very tall hills on the other side of some very large rivers.

When one is traveling over an hour on trains, buses, and boats to see a couch, why not make a day of it? And so we did.

The opera house stands across the river from our old friend Luna Park. Still creepy in daylight! In a good way.

First observation? The opera house is WAY cooler in person than in giant zoomed out landscape photos. Sure, it’s a neat shape in tourist pictures, but a far off shot gives you no sense of scale or how it’s constructed.

The roofing is a mix of different types of ceramic tiles, which gives the roof its characteristic shimmer.

The way the building looks, sprouting out of the ground into massively tall sweeping points is the coolest bit, though.

YAWN

I guess I prefer perspective.

 In the Circular Quay (pronounced “key”, I did not know that) area where the opera house is located, someone owns this:

I wanted to take a picture with Ben posing all gangsta next to it, but he said whomever owned it was obviously actually gangsta, and would shoot us. I said, anyone who owns a mini can’t be gangsta. He said, IT’S A BLING CAR. I said, it has a handicap sticker. He said, all the more evidence! He’s been in a shoot-out! I rest my case with, “It’s a mini.”

In other news, ferry rides are pretty.

I can’t wait to more fully explore this coast line.

When we eventually did find our way to the residence of the perfect-couch, it was indeed perfect, and the people selling it were perfectly nice. We’ve looked into hiring a guy and a truck to help us move it sometime this week. However, they are moving on Saturday, themselves, so we told them what we were planning, but that we’d rather they have the money rather than a truck-guy, if they were interested. So! We’re giving them $100 to deliver it, which is more than we were planning on paying for a truck-guy, but brings our total investment to about what we were assuming we’d pay to /buy/ a couch in the first place. Win-win. I am anxiously awaiting Friday. I think we’ll watch a movie on the computer with some wine on our new couch.

We rushed to catch the ferry back to Circular Quay, and man, we were both tired and ready to be home, but Sydney at night is gorgeous. Taking long exposures from a moving boat isn’t the best way to get beautiful shots, but I don’t care. Look anyway!

Impressionist:

Realism:

It was a good day.

First foray into Sydney

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Now that we know we have a place to live (it’s confirmed! we talked on the phone and everything!) Ian ever so graciously, I mean, seriously, carted us around to a farmer’s market and several different stores to buy some flat-necessaries.

At the market I bought some oranges that were picked yesterday. This is one example of when offering free samples to passers-by really pays off.

I mentioned that I’d never had passionfruit, so Ian bought some of those. What a weird fruit. They really look like the seed pod for some sort of dangerous alien-spawn, but they are delicious! The texture could be off-putting I imagine, but it reminded me of tomato seeds, and it was scrumptiously tart-sweet.

We visited a mall where two stores were going out of business, which, well, is sad for them but WIN for us. We got a store-used fan, some cheap used power strips, kitchen accouterments, and I scored a mouse for cheap that I’ve been lusting after for months.

Errands done, we awaited Viive’s return from a cancer conference where she’d spent the first half of the day, and then we set out to explore a lovely park called Balls Head and have dinner in downtown Sydney.

Balls Head is in the middle of a bunch of urban development, yet you can get lost in squiggly little paths through sandstone cliffs and scrubby bush.

And you always have the incredible views of the harbor and the city skyline.

After a chilly exploration (it’s spring here, plus coastal winds) Viive and Ian took us out for Indian at a place called “Cumin”. Hah. I converted everyone to my old, boring, favorite, Chicken Tikka Masala! There’s a reason it’s my favorite, after all. We all, um, ate a bit too much. Turns out four mains for four people is about one more than necessary, but only if you’re unwilling to stuff yourself on delicious. Viive and Ian have been so, so nice to us this entire time. They’ve let us stay in their house, given us breakfast each day (steel cut oats in the rice cooker), and taken us for dinner twice now. We’ve really been blown away. They keep saying “we’ve been there, we remember what it’s like being in a new place” but still. Incredibly generous.

And then, then! We took a walk down along the waterfront past Luna Park, which is supposedly reminiscent of Coney Island. But I’ve never been to Coney Island, so if I ever do go there, it will be reminiscent of Luna Park to me. It’s a nostalgic-feeling old amusement park with games and bumper cars and a small rollercoaster and, of course, lots of bright lights. And a giant head with enormous teeth and creepy-doll cheeks that eats you as you enter. Also that.

This may be the best part, however. The trash/recycle bins were all marked with what looked like those big boards at fairs where you stick your head into a cutout hole in order to take funny pictures. And then you feed the clowns your trash/recycling!

I call that a wonderfully full day. Passion fruit! Oranges! Cheap housing supplies! Delicious Indian! Fancy lights! Rubbish-clowns!

….tomorrow we move! Can you believe it? We’ve been here less than a week, and we found a place to live! That’s mostly thanks to Ben. I have to grudgingly admit that finding a flat is probably more important and nicer in the long run than visiting the aquarium :)