4th Anniversary in Sydney

I know I've been slow on updating the blog, but we've been pretty busy moving into our new place (which I will show pictures of eventually!) and we've been slowed down by the fact that our internet provider has *still* not managed to show up to hook up our internet.

But I digress, you aren't here to hear my woeful rant, you're here to read and see how much fun we've been having getting settled in to Sydney.

I'm picking up where I left off; our 4 year wedding anniversary! Rob and I lined up a fantastic day of sightseeing that definitely kept us moving. We started off the morning at the Sydney Tower (Sydney's equivalent of the CN Tower). It's 1,014 ft above Sydney's CBD, is the tallest tower in Sydney and the 3rd tallest in Australia. We did this really cool thing called the Sky Walk, which had us putting on sexy blue onesies, strapping on a safety harness, and latching on to a track that brought us out on to the observation deck of the tower. The views from up there were unbelievable!  We got a view of the city from a 360 tour of the observation deck. We could see our new neighborhood as well as all kinds of other areas surrounding the Sydney CBD. It was fantastic; and our tour guide was great, too!

Rob and I with the city skyline behind us!

Darling harbour (which we live right beside now) at night time. This image was part of the package we got from our Sky Walk tour. I'm sure you'll see more of them as the Blog goes on

Our tour guide, Rachel. She was absolutely lovely! You can see Matthew, our English tour mate (the only other person on the walk with us) over her right shoulder, and Rob and I over her left.

Rob loving the underwater tunnels with Mantas, sharks and other cool fish!

After the Sky Walk, we had lunch back at the apartment and then headed over to the Sydney aquarium. Rob had never been to an aquarium before, and I was so happy that he enjoyed it as much as he did. It was a really fun opportunity to learn about the local aquatic life, as well as relax in the soothing blues of aquatic lighting and the graceful movements of fish, jellyfish, manta rays and yes, even sharks. It was a absolutely wonderful!

Lobsters, Rock Fish and an octopus. Just some of the cool things we saw!

I loved watching Rob love what we was watching. It was such a joy to share this experience with him

A little group of Angel Fish

Sting rays.... I could have watched them all day long.

Rob hanging out in his F1 car with Australian Mark Webber.

After the Aquarium, we went to Madam Tussaud's, more as a novelty than anything else, and because we had paid for a pass that got us into the Sky Walk, Aquarium, Tussaud's, etc. We toured through quickly, but not before taking some fun pictures!

The end of the day saw us enjoying some drinks and then, of course, Sushi which commemorated our first date and every anniversary after that point. We had a lovely day being tourists in Sydney;

Don't ask...

So very life like... but who knew these guys were so SHORT in real life?!

Drinks with my favourite man in the whole world, and then sushi to end off a wonderful day!

I hope the photos do our wonderful day justice! 

Soaking in the Art

The Art Gallery of NSW

Rob hanging out in the 'main street'

On Wednesday, May 7th Rob and I decided to make a trip to the Art Gallery of NSW (New South Wales) because we haven't been to and art gallery together for quite some time. Also, it's free to the public, which is pretty fantastic. This Art Gallery is a nice little mix of Modern, Classical and all art in between. There was some Australian Aboriginal art, there was a special exhibition of publically collaborated art... it was just a nice mix.

And because it was free, we didn't feel pressured to see everything there, knowing that we could easily come back another time and pick up where we left off. There was certainly some beautiful work there (and some work that I'm not so into), and here are some of our favourites.

The main hallway was a pretty cool introduction to the gallery. There were all these flapping tinsle-like streamers hanging from the ceiling. This was an installation from Sydney-based artist Nike Savvas. The installation, called Rally, is this vast, fluttering field of colour suspended above the Gallery’s entrance court. It is made up of more than 60,000 strips of coloured plastic and stretches more than 50 metres through the building. It's one of the largest individual works ever staged at the Art Gallery of NS, and it definitely felt like a giant welcome rug as well walked in!

Another artist that I really was drawn to was Afghani artist Khadim Ali. His work revolved around the concept of displacement, distrust and war-torn culture. He currently lives in Sydney, but his family has been tossed around between Afghanistan to India then to Pakistan. Because he is Afghan Hazara, he and his family live in fear of the Taliban and this fear has followed Khadim Ali and his family all his life.

His work is called The haunted lotus and depicts the demons that continue to haunt him. It includes fine gouache and ink paintings; a series of large-scale, richly coloured rugs; and videos that represent the artist’s working methodology. This exhibition contains Ali’s first handmade rugs – as carpets are so much a part of life in Afghanistan – and represents a turning point in his practice.  

I definitely found both his paintings and his rugs to be absolutely beautiful, sad, poignant, and extremely well executed. I loved the muted colours that contrasted with pops of gold foil and bright contrast colours. I could have spent hours looking at the handful of piece in this exhibit. 
 

Left:  A drawing of one of the mythical demons Ali uses to represent his concept Right:  A hand-made rug based off of this original piece.

A typographical design featuring a poem that I remember from highschool; my friend, Iulia, used to love this poem and I haven't heard it since then!

Aboriginal art sculptures. The Kangaroo reminds me of Rila!

Sol LeWitt (America, 1928–2007) was one of the most influential artists of his generation

More Sol LeWitt

A fun little pixelated sculpture

Rob's favourite; a flock of fruit bat sculptures on a clothes line.

Best quote of the day (by yours truly) "It's proportional to real life without being realistic"

 Stay tuned; so much more to come!

Home and Sky

We've been some busy little Canadian Beavers in Sydney the past week! We saw all of the sky (from the sky at least), we hunted down our new home, we sampled fantastic food and drink, and we saw some incredible sights. I'm not going to write about everything today, but I will definitely fill you in on the most exciting news we have so far; we have a new home!!!

Our central downtown options

Like any big city, Sydney is a sprawling place full of smaller subsections. While there are lots of options further from the downtown core in the various surrounding suburbs, Rob and I agreed that we wanted to be close to the thick of things (without being in the thick of things!)

On our arrival to Sydney, we found ourselves in a hotel smack dab in the middle of the City Center (otherwise known as the Central Business District or CBD). If you look at the map to the left, we are right in the middle of the pink area, just above Hyde Park. We knew we didn't want to be somewhere quite so congested as it get insane with traffic and pedestrians during peak hours, but we wanted to be close enough downtown to be able to easily get there via public transport or even just walking.

While looking for apartments, we stumbled on this neighborhood called Pyrmont, which is just off of Darling Harbour. We loved how close it was to downtown, without feeling busy and hectic. There were great little shops and restaurants lining the main streets, and a couple of large grocery stores in the area, within easy walking distance. This was a huge plus. We looked a a number of places, but ended up settling on a fully furnished 2 bedroom apartment.

The pink box on the left is where our hotel is currently, and the right pink box is our new digs!

The first body of water in the above image is Darling Harbour, which I've already fallen in love with. I'm so excited to be living so close to a lovely body of water and going for runs across the pedestrian bridge and around the harbour. We are really happy with the place we are going to be living! We're moving into this furnished apartment on Wednesday, so we get to start really settling in after that.

A panorama shot of Darling Harbour

Darling Harbour extends northwards from Sydney's Chinatown, along both sides of Cockle Bay to King Street Warf on the east, and Pyrmont on the west. Cockle Bay is just one of the waterways that makes up Darling Harbour, which opens north into the much larger Port Jackson. Fun Fact: During the Great Depression, the eastern part of Darling Harbour (Barangaroo) was known as "The Hungry Mile", which referred to the waterside workers searching for jobs along the wharves. Doesn't sound so great, but hey, now it's mostly restaurants, shops, and other attractions including the Powerhouse Museum, the Sydney Aquarium, Madam Tussauds, Australian National Maritime Museum, and the LG IMAX theater, just to name a few.

The view of the CBD from Darling Harbour

Part of the Maritime museum (which we haven't been to yet)

After signing our lease for our new home, and buying some groceries, we take the pedestrian bridge (which used to be the Sky Train) back to the CBD

The Pedestrian Bridge

More of Darling Harbour

The Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre (which is currently being torn down right now, to be built up better) is a bit of an eye sore right now, but I'm sure it will get better with time.

 

 That's all for the moment! We've done much more, but I'll leave that for another post... just to keep everyone coming back for more! We went to the Aquarium, on a Sky Walk, the Art Museum, and much more! We also saw this crazy animal in the park coming out of the Art Museum, and had no clue what it was. But it was very friendly and wanted to walk up my leg.... it was the size of a small cat and had giant eyes.... anyone who knows what this might be, let us know!!

Sydney Arrival!

The first leg of our adventure was a smashing success! We planned, we organized, we made sure that every last detail was arranged, and I for one am SO grateful that we put all the planning time in ahead of time. We did everything that we could before hand -- including setting up banking, researching rent prices, getting everything for the long haul flight including wet naps, benodryl, eye masks, ear plugs, and compression socks, and watching seasons of "Boarder Crossing: Australia" (Thanks Jos!)

The spoils from our past travels; looking forward to adding more!

Packed up and ready to go! Just waiting to meet our Ottawa landlord to hand back the keys.

One last look out the window at our Ottawa view...

All the preparation was definitely worth it! I can't imagine going through those final days of packing, shipping, boxing, storing and selling without having the lists and plans to keep us on track. As a result, we were always ahead of schedule and there was none of the stress that you would expect from an international move...

Rocky Mountains at sunset at we flew to Vancouver

We flew from Ottawa to Vancouver on Wednesday afternoon. The time change was definitely odd. Although the flight was 6 hours, we left Ottawa at 5:00PM and landed at Vancouver at 7:30PM, which felt odd. We had a few hours of layover in the Vancouver airport so of course we ate some food, and then boarded our flight to Sydney at about 11:00PM. This is where our hardcore traveling research came into play. We were decked out in eye mask, neck pillow, ear plugs, and blankets, and downed a benodryl tablet before settling in for a snooze that we hoped would take us at least half way through the 15 hr flight. I was successful, Rob was semi-successful. I think I probably slept 3/4 of the flight which was GREAT, and even Rob managed to sleep for a couple of hours (a new track record for Rob's flight experiences!) Super plus? No one sat in the third seat in our row, so at least we were able to take turns stretching out to sleep!

Rob found some Polar Bears in the Vancouver Airport

Catching some ZZZ's on the plane to Sydney

The view of Sydney from the plane

Once we finally landed, the realization started to hit us. We were here! And this would be our actual home for the next few years. It was 8:00am Sydney time and the sun was shining. We grabbed some Vodafone SIM cards for our unlocked iPhones and were instantly re-attached to the internet world. Definitely different than the old days! We grabbed a taxi out to our temporary accommodations and by 9:30am were strolling the streets of the Sydney Central Business District (CBD). We stopped for a coffee and once again reveled in the realization that this was real; we weren't just visiting. This was the real deal. I sat there, sipping my Flat White (the closest thing to a brewed coffee with Cream that they do here in Sydney) and thought "Wow, I can't believe we just flew half way around the world, and now we are walking the streets of our new home city...."

We spent the next couple of days in a flurry of planning. We were confirming Bank account info, Health Insurance, finding a permanent place to live, and even meeting up with an old friend (hi Joyanne!)

Sunday was a relaxing day. We wanted to take some time to just be together, and enjoy the new city we'd call home. We took the train to the Sydney Harbour to check out the beautiful Opera House and take a lovely walk through the local area. There's also a (pretty touristy) market that happens there every Sunday that we checked out.

A Moment of Normal. We stopped for Starbucks and enjoyed a 1/2 hour of sitting, sipping, and chatting.

The Sydney Hardbour Bridge. Super cool

Rob at the top of the stairs, with the Opera House behind him.

 The Opera house was gorgeous. We didn't go inside, but we definitely took time to marvel at the outside, and walked all the way around it as well. the Opera house was designed by a Danish architect named Jorn Utzon and opened on October 20, 1973.  It took almost 20 years to build the Opera House, which made a lot of people upset at the time.

Though its name suggests a single venue, the project comprises multiple performance venues which together are among the busiest performing arts centres in the world — hosting over 1,500 performances each year attended by some 1.2 million people. More than seven million people visit the site each year. It's identified as one of the 20th century's most distinctive buildings and one of the most famous performing arts centres in the world. The Sydney Opera House became a UNESCO Heritage Site on June 28, 2007.


It's a beautiful building to look at! The white "sails" are made up of thousands of ceramic tiles, which I definitely didn't know about until we saw the building. This is definitely worth seeing, as is the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

We also saw the Big Dig, which is an archaeological site in the middle of the harbor that investigates the historical life of early colonists n Australia. It covers the stages of the arrival of the Europeans, early residents of the area, the Plague of 1900 and early modern history. Now, there is a hostel that is built above the site, which I believe is there to try to educate travelers about the interesting history beneath the hostel structure.

Loving it so far; I'll keep everyone updated!