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Setting Out
Well, we did it – we quit our jobs, packed up the Jeep, and we’re on the way to a year of Australian adventures! We’ve been on the road for a week now, and as expected, the weeks leading up to departure were chaotic with many, many deviations from the plan. But, as of our departure day (Saturday 23 June), we were homeless and unemployed, so there was really only one way to go – pack the Jeep and get out of Sydney! Even though it was impossible to imagine how we’d fit everything we wanted to bring into the very limited space we had available. Even though Nick hadn’t…
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A New Adventure
Well, it’s been almost exactly three years since the last update to this blog on 15 May 2015, and I thought it was past time to pick it up again. Since 2015, we’ve had some awesome adventures around Australia, Asia, New Zealand, the South Pacific, and back in the U.S. and Canada – but what’s gotten me to blog again is that we’re about to embark on our craziest, biggest, most adventurous (?) adventure yet: Nick and I are leaving our jobs and spending a year traveling around Australia. Even though we’ve been talking about doing something like this for a couple of years, and it’s been over four months…
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Life in Sydney
I think it’s finally safe to say…we’ve settled in to daily life in Sydney. We’ve lived here for 7 months now (landed on Oct 17 2014), so you might say “well yeah, of course you’ve settled in”, but here’s what the first 5 months of our time in Sydney looked like: Land in Sydney and move into temp housing After 2 weeks we switch temp housing Pam goes to Korea for a week for work and the day after she comes back… We find a permanent apartment and the day after that… Nick goes back to Ottawa for 3 weeks and the day after he comes back… We move into our permanent…
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Favourite Sydney Walks (so far)
Sydney is a stunningly beautiful place and one of the best ways that Nick and I have found to explore it has been via the many walks Sydney has to offer. We thought we would share some of our favourites! For reference, here’s a list of the ten best coastal walks in Sydney from Concrete Playground, which we use as inspiration. Spit Bridge to Manly Cove This is our definite favourite of the walks we’ve done. It’s a decent workout (10km with some ups and downs), it’s fun (at high tide you might have to swim part of the trail near Forty Baskets beach, or take a pretty significant stairway…we…
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Dinner at momofuku seiōbo
Warning: this post contains a lot of photos of food! So don’t bother reading farther if that sort of thing annoys you 🙂 Momofuku, which means “lucky peach”, was started in NYC in 2004 by David Chang, as Momofuku Noodle Bar. The Noodle Bar began as a typical ramen restaurant but soon exploded in popularity when Chef Chang gave the team of cooks permission to use whatever ingredients they liked and cook however they wanted. You can read more than you ever wanted to know about Momofuku at the Wikipedia article – but suffice it to say there are now 12 Momofuku restaurants worldwide, each with a different theme or specialty,…
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Sydney’s Rainbow Mardi Gras
A few weeks ago, Nick and I were at our favourite local pub having a mid-day pint (as one does) and discovered brochures for something amazing: a gay & lesbian Mardi Gras! It’s effectively Sydney’s gay pride festival, stemming from protests in 1978 (homosexuality was still illegal until 1984 in New South Wales). You can read more about the history here at the Wikipedia article. Nick and I learned that Mardi Gras is Sydney’s second-biggest tourist even of the year! The celebrations began on a Sunday with Mardi Gras fair day – a day of live music, food, and drinks. Next year we will stay for the whole day as…
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Chinese New Year & Lunar New Year
Happy new year! Nick and I celebrated Chinese/Lunar New Year in style this year in Sydney, which seems to celebrate everything in style! First, there were fireworks to kick off the two weeks of celebrations for the New Year. I went with some friends – Nick missed out on this one as he was stuck at home with a very bad cold. However, the following week he was back to himself and we spent the day wandering around the festival in Darling Park… After riding the merry-go-around (we asked, and the woman selling tickets assured us that we can never be too old!), it was off for dinner at Din Tai…
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30 before 30: Final Update
Back in 2013 I shared my 30 before 30 list on this blog, separated into 2 posts of things I had done, and things I still had to do: 30 before 30: What I’ve Done 30 before 30: Still To Do I turned 30 in September of 2014, and as I predicted, definitely did not achieve all of the items on my list! I did have an amazing time checking off the ones I did complete, and checked off a few other things that weren’t on the list in the meantime. Of the items left on the “Still To Do” list in September 2013, here’s what I did manage to…
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Quick Jaunt to New Zealand
One of the first things on our Australia bucket list was to visit my grandmother in New Zealand. I am very close to my grandmother, and Nick loves her as well, so it was a pretty high priority for us to go and see her as soon as we could. That plan came together during the second-last week of January. Just to show you how amazing my grandmother is, here’s a picture of her in her heyday as a go-go/cage dancer, after she had given birth to 4 sons: And without further ado, we were off to the airport! The first thing we did upon arriving, after settling in, was…
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A Place To Call Home
One of the first big challenges in any new city is trying to find a place to live. Not only do you have to choose a neighbourhood with little to no knowledge about the available choices, but every city seems to have different “rules” about apartment hunting, rental applications, rent payments, etc. Because we relocated for work, we were able to use the services of a local agent who specialises in helping relocating people with all of the above challenges and more. During one of the first conversations we had with her via Skype while we still lived in California, she asked us to describe the type of place we would…
