Last Saturday, we scoffed coffee and pie at Black Star in Newtown before making our way to Oxford Street. Popped into old haunt Ampersand cafe bookstore to look for books and drink chai latte. Mark got a couple of philos books but I didn't find anything. I am starting to find that in second hand bookstores, I just gravitate towards editions of books I already know and love and want to buy them again....Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Goethe's Faust, anything by Joe Orton...I had to stop myself buying a great 1970s edition of What the Butler Saw - I really don't need a third copy!
Wandered on down into Paddington and stopped in at the newly opened Paddington Reservoir - the old site having been transformed into a new landscaped urban park. It's great in there - very calm - and there are chairs you can sit in so we did that for a bit.
Wandered around the market in Paddo for a bit, then back up Oxford Street for a look in Incu. We turned off in the direction of Rushcutters Bay and found some lovely streets, but got hungry so headed back up to Crown Street for late late lunch at Kawa (actually, Mark ordered breakfast even though it was 4pm!).
Then retired to the cinema for wine and to watch The Special Relationship which was good.
Sunday saw a nice bit of relaxation in favourite cafe, The Kick Inside up on Erskineville Road. Coffee and apple crumble, and a long hour's indulgence in my new David Mitchell.
Reading this is like slipping into a pool of velvet. Every page is so wonderfully evocative. And The Kick Inside is a great reading environment with its sofas and lovable coffee.
Then we caught the train to Circular Quay and did something I've had on my to-do list for a long, long time: Susannah Place museum.
Susannah Place is a row of terraced houses built in 1844 in The Rocks. The houses were continuously occupied from that point up until the mid 1970s, the last tenants moving out in 1990 at which point the terraces were handed over to the Historic Houses Trust.
We paid our $8 and joined the last tour of the day, and the guide took us through the houses, telling us stories of all the tenants along the way. The houses have been largely left as they were when last vacated, but have been furnished for different eras using the memories and photographs provided by former tenants.
The walls and ceilings were cracked and peeling, and you could see layers of paint and paper. The rooms were very small and cramped, with low ceilings, kitchens in the basement, toilets in the backyard. It was amazing the number of people that lived in those small rooms together - it was a real insight into the life of the working classes in Sydney in the 19th and 20th centuries. One had a double bed and a single bed crammed into a tiny bedroom, which had been shared by 3 sisters. Another house had a rudimentary shower installed in the basement, constructed it seemed from corrugated plastic, after the owner had become fed up of taking baths in the outhouse!
The tour also included watching a video where they took former tenants of the houses, people who had grown up in Susannah Place, and asked them about their memories. They seemed to remember a lot of hardship from their lives there, but it was fascinating watching them walk round the houses and say things like "we had our table here". It reminded you that real people had spent their lives there. Really interesting.
