Flat whites and flat hunting

We spent the first week flat hunting and absorbing the Australian obsession with coffee. There are very few chain coffee shops here, but hundreds of nice independent places. Since it was raining rather a lot in our first week we dived into quite a few lovely little cafes when the flat hunting got just a bit too soggy.

And that's how we've come to love the flat white. Just so much better than a latte or a cappuccino.

After looking around a few areas that had been recommended to us we narrowed our flat search down to a handful of areas. It's a very different process to the London first come, first served system that we're both so used to - here, the house is opened by the agent for 15 minutes and anyone who is interested pops along at that time, fills out a form and then the landlord chooses who they want. Some of the flats we viewed with just a handful of other people, some with 20 other couples, but on a very, very rainy Thursday morning we handed in our paperwork for a lovely little house in Surry Hills...and we got it!!

Our new house - on the far left with green door

Also different to London, the houses are pretty much always rented with no furniture. So with all our furniture in a storage unit in Sheffield and with a week still left in the apartment we were staying in, we set about gumtree, hired a man and a ute and found an interesting mix of furniture. 

It looked rather empty when we first moved in!

 Our new little house is only a 30 minute walk for us both to work and about 40 minutes to the  Opera House. It's a lovely area with lots of restaurants, cafes and bars so plenty of places to indulge in flat whites.

Arrivals

Thought we'd start with a little retrospective since it's taken us a while to join back in with the Modern Age of internet.

Ben is in love with the Airbus 380. We were bottom deck on the London to Singapore leg, but top deck on the second leg to Sydney. More spacious upstairs and you can get a special little luggage side compartment (small things please us!). The flight took 24 hrs in total, but luckily we were both so shattered from the wedding, packing malarkey that we slept a fair bit. Also watched very good film Win Win with Paul Giamatti - highly recommended.

Ben in Singapore gazing at his new love

We arrived in Sydney about 7am. Got in a taxi to the hotel (our first experience of the fun that is a taxi ride here - Sydney really needs to introduce The Knowledge!) where unfortunately our room wasn't ready, so with a coffee inside us we set out exploring still wearing the clothes we were wearing two days previously. Who knew though that Sydney could be quite so wet. It started chucking it down. Little did we know that was just the start of a week long deluge!!! Even in the rain and our groggy, smelly state though our first sighting of the harbour and opera house was pretty exhilarating. 

We look pretty ropey here, but that's the Opera House!!!!!! We also got on a ferry round the harbour as it was too rainy to be outside.

Some more rainy Sydney shots

Welcome one and all

Hello all and welcome to our little blog. We thought we'd set it up so that we could keep those bothered/interested informed of our time In The Land Down Under. We'll aim to update it weekly and keep it vaguely entertaining and possibly informative. Feedback is most welcome!