Life in Sydney so far and our new address

Well its been a strange couple of days. After being ill on the first day (bad stomach again) and feeling generally sorry for my self things are definately on the up. Word of warning to anybody. If you ever decide to visit sydney DO NOT arrive when Robbie Williams is playing in concert and DO NOT arrive in December. Sat at the airport on a Saturday night trying to get a hotel is pretty disheartening when you ring up everywhere and its fully booked up or its say £300 a night. Luckily they had the internet at the airport and we managed to get a hotel for £45 a night and to be honest we struck gold. Its a simple hotel around the corner for the Kings Cross train station and has got the tiniest bathroom you will ever go in. Tim you would not have a chance at sitting on the loo you knees wouldnt fit. In fact me and Simon can only just sit down and we are diddy. But appart from that its really good, we can even if we stand on our tip toes see the bridge.

The time so far has consisted at laughing at Simons head as it peeled, and grumbling that Sydney reminds me of Manchester when its sunny. Kings Cross is not a nice area to stay around and as we have been concentration on trying to find somewhere to live instead of taking the sights in its just felt like a normal city. We found Nandos yesterday though to cheer me up.

In regard to us living in Sydney. We are in a Chicken and Egg situation at the moment. We dont think its worth getting tied up in 3 months accommodation when we dont know whether we can get jobs but obviously we need somewhere to stay whilst we get a job. The fact is that Sydney is fully booked up hotels wise for Christmas and New Year, therefore we have been debating about gettig out of Sydney for Christmas, staying in a campervan, or something. Anyway the something is that we decided to flat share for a couple of weeks. It seems that there is people that have got flats here in sydney that are going home for Christmas and want someone to pay their rent. Therefore yesterday we arranged to see 3 places. The first place meant we had to jump on the Ferry to a place called Manly. We were woo'ed by this from the start. (Sydney is getting better and better) and we found this flat that belonged to a couple that they shared with a girl. They were going away for 3 weeks. The flat was okay but the view was amazing, i can sit on the veranda and see the sea. heaven. The area seemed really nice as well. The couple Scott and Ingrid explained that they were going away but wanted to tell the flat mate that it was a friend and his girlfriend going to take over the room so they were keen to make sure we looked normal, they commented on the fact that we looked like a respectable mature couple (should i take offense by this :-) ) . We left them and headed for the 2nd viewing, debating on the ferry journey back whether to just take this one or hold out to the rest as we hadnt seen any before. The sign came when the 2nd one rang up and said the room was now taken before we even got there, we took this as the push we needed and rang the 1st one back up and said we would take the room. They didnt give us a yes or no answer on the phone at that stage and said they would get back to us after they had spoken to their room mate. We decided therefore to continue on to the 3rd viewing instead which was near Bondi Beach which we wanted to go and see anyway. Needless to say the 3rd viewing cancelled on us as well, so we were relieved that we hadnt waited before ringing up about the 1st one we just had to hope that they wanted us. Which luckily we did. We are now signed up ready to move in on the Tuesday 19th December and if you want to send us Christmas cards you can :-) you can send them to:

5/20 Ocean Road
Manly 2095
New South Wales
AUSTRALIA

We met the couple for a drink last night as Scott wanted to make sure we had our stories straight in regard to how we know them. Simon and Scott have a mutual friend called Dave (it was cos Scott reminded me of my Dave - ie he had blond hair) and they had met in London and Dave and Scott used to work together in the building trade. Having said this, Scott was a really good guy he wrote up a little contract for the money and showed us ID etc and so it all seemed above board. He even said Simon could use his surf board as he had beginners boards in the garage and we can also use his bike. I can imagine us being friends with them when they get back.

Jobs and some Sightseeing is the next thing to do.

ooo and the geeky side of me and simon have been wooed by the public transport and the fact that the trains are double deckers, thats cool. London should take note.

In regard to food we had a really nice Italian the other night, it was a small walk away from Kings Cross and it was in a restaurants where you bring your own drink, so when we were sat down i ran over to the off license across the road, and whilst i was in the off license it absolutely chucked it down, wheres Trudies rain mac when i needed it. Now apparently you get more wet if you run through rain, have you ever tried to convince your self that if you walk though rain you wont get wet its really difficult. Needless to say i was wet and Simon laughed at me. (it was my own fault because it was me that wanted a bottle of wine)