Trumpets and bookmarks

Today we investigated suburbs, and walked all the way from Concord West to Summer Hill. At which point I became not active any more and we got the train back in to the city.

I think maybe we will end up living in Strathfield or thereabouts. It is usefully located and is a "prestigious suburb" according to pretty much everything written about Sydney. I actually didn't like it so much but Mark did and to be honest it felt safe and leafy and had pretty good shops and is very well connected to both Macquarie Uni and the city.

Anyway, I thought I would remind you all of the ways you can keep track of me:

- This blog. I will try to update as often as the fancy takes me. Hopefully at least once a week.
- My Flickr. All my photos will go on here as and when I have some. Perhaps everyday, perhaps once a week. If there are new photos uploaded worth mentioning, I will mention them here.
- My Twitter. Usually I update this once every day or so. As you can see, my latest Twitter tweets appear in the navigation sidebar of this blog (look to the right!). If you think you've missed some, click "follow me on Twitter" to go to my Twitter.

Now I am off to enjoy my new heater and hot water bottle and Batman on tv!

Glebe Point Diner

Just got in from a meal at Glebe Point Diner, to celebrate the end of our first full week in Sydney!

It was really amazing, and such good value considering what you would pay for a similar standard in the UK. We started with trout (Mark) and crab (me). I got to use the crab pokey stick for the first time! You know when they give you the crab legs and you get a little skewer to poke in to get at the meat? I was a little lost at first, but soon got the hang of it. It was delicious. Main course was even better - we both had ruby mullet with mussels on a potato bed, with some kale on top.

I'm not usually a pudding person and rarely have desert in restaurants, but we decided to go for it and I must say it was possibly my favourite course of the three. We shared a chocolate mousse and a strawberry trifle and both were delicious.

The waiting staff were wonderfully friendly, and the guy even brought out a leaf of kale on a plate to show the table next to ours when they asked what cale was! Haha, I only know what kale is because that was the guinea pig's favourite food.

With a decent bottle of wine the bill came to just over $160. Not bad at all for the standard of food and service, and definitely somewhere we will be going back to.

Getting lost and finding home.

Today was spent walking from Glebe into the City, to the National Australia Bank on Liverpool Street. Although we have our card and PINs, our cheque books won't arrive until next week, so I needed to get a counter cheque in case we needed to put down a deposit on a flat in the meantime. Which reminds me, they call them "units", not "flats". Which sounds a bit clinical.

On the way back, I turned the wrong way and ended up getting lost at Darling Harbour. Forever. Seriously, once you are in, there is no way out! It's kind of a pleasant place to get lost though, as you can see. I eventually escaped up a dingy looking staircase and found myself back up on Market Street. Then I walked all the way down George Street and Broadway to get back on to Glebe Point Road. This is decidedly NOT the quickest route, so next time I will look at walking via Ultimo. Or get the bus, but since I have a lot of time for walking right now it seems sensible to save the $1.80 bus fare.

Tomorrow night we have a reservation at the Glebe Point Diner, to celebrate the end of our first full week in Sydney! We won't be celebrating too hard however, as we are going to view a lot of flats...units sorry.....on Saturday morning, in Drummoyne and then maybe Summer Hill. I also want to look in Strathfield and Burwood as those would be good areas from the point of view of both of us getting to work easily, and it seems cheap to rent there. There is also a possibility of us taking over one of Mark's colleague's leases in Meadowbank on the North Shore, as she has bought a house and is keen to move in, but her lease is still running until October.

Anyhow, we shall see.

Finding feet.

Mark has started work at Macquarie Uni so for the past couple of days I have been sorting bits and bobs and also taking trips to the supermarket here in Glebe. It's called Coles and it's in this big shopping centre place called Broadway down the street.

It is slightly alarming how expensive some things are. All the chocolate bars are $1.80, which at the current exchange rate is about 90p. When you are used to 33p Crunchie bars from the Nottingham University union shop, this seems a bit extreme! SO I guess I am off chocolate for a while. There are cheap cookies however, which makes up for it a little. And cheap tofu and also cheap SUSHI which pretty much makes life worth living.

Milk is also pricy, but the worst thing is shampoo! It's like double the price! But I had to buy some anyway, and after a week of washing my hair in rubbish gunk nicked out of hotel bathrooms, it is such a relief to have a clean, pretty-smelling head again.

I just watched the weather, and everyone was going crazy about the fact that it is going to be "only" 14 degrees C for the next couple of days. "It's going to be COLD COLD COLD" apparently.

I love that I am in a country where 14 degrees in winter is considered especially cold.

Arrived!

Well I made it to Sydney, arriving last Wednesday. I also had a fun two days in Singapore on the way. I don't have a lot of blogging time at the moment, but I will try to make up for it when we are more settled! Here is the first picture i took in Sydney, and I will try to post about that and Singapore soon!

Magical box

Mark bought me a Victorian writing slope for my birthday. It is brilliant! I've wanted one for years, but they can be expensive. This one needs a little restoration, so was affordable, but not too much that it is unusable.




It has storage for secret letters under the slopes, and still had its original ink bottle, which a lot of them don't!

Being removed

We have now moved out of Nottingham! The removals men came on Monday the 16th June, and we left on the Tuesday to come here to Broughton. It was remarkably stress-free, the only faff being moving the stuff we were not taking to Australia, and trying to (over)load up Mark's dad's van.

These first two photos were taken on Saturday 14th:

By Tuesday, we were empty!

Our belongings are hopefully being loaded onto a ship soon, to arrive in Sydney in around 10 weeks time (fingers crossed!).