It’s 5:45AM here on my second day in Sydney and I’m wide awake thanks to jet lag. I woke up around 4:00 and tried to fall back asleep to no avail. So, I thought I’d at least get out of bed and start working on a blog post. OK, to sum up so far…
The flight out here was actually pretty nice. It all started with a very cute gal checking us in to our V Australia flight at LAX. Margaret and I had four heavy bags to check, and we knew we’d have to pay $100 each because we were over the weight limits, but Danielle, the super nice V Australia employee didn’t charge us anything! Maybe it’s because I mentioned we were moving, or because I smiled a lot, or because V Australia is a new airline and they’re just trying to make everyone write nice blog posts about them right now. Whatever the case may be, we walked away happy and impressed. Thanks, Danielle!
The flight itself was, of course, long. But V Australia has a great entertainment system, even in the economy class, and we had our choice of plenty of movies to watch including some new releases that I had actually ripped onto my laptop to watch on the plane (hah!). Margie watched Twilight (her review: “pretty bad”) and the new The Day The Earth Stood Still (”better than Twilight”) and I watched Vicky Christina Barcelona (my review: not really a comedy, 3/5 stars). But mostly, we slept. I think we probably got around eight hours of sleep in total, which was pretty nice. It’s funny how, when flying internationally, you wake up, realize you have four and a half hours to go, and think “Hey, that’s not long at all!”
And so, eventually, we landed. Clearing customs was a breeze and Jack, my new boss, was waiting to pick us up and drive us to our temporary apartment. Jack even gave us a little driving tour around the neighborhood we’re staying in, called Mosman, in North Sydney. After the tour, Jack went off to the office, leaving Margie and I to explore Mosman on our own, after two much needed showers, of course.
Scenery-wise, Mosman feels a little like the Pacific Palisades near Malibu, California, in that there’s lots of trees, quiet streets, and some really beautiful houses with amazing views of the harbor. We were pretty hungry, so we stopped at one of the first restaurants we came across, Oodles of Noodles, an asian noodle house, where we had, yes, some pretty good noodles. The prices were a bit on the high side, at around A$12 for a big bowl of noodles that would probably cost $9 back in NYC (note that the first price is in Aussie dollars and the second is in US dollars; so, comparably, they’re about equal, but with regards to local income levels, etc, I still think A$12 is a bit much for noodles. I don’t yet know if prices are high here because Mosman is a pretty nice suburb, or if food is just generally more expensive here, or some combination of the two; I’ll collect some more data and report back later. More on expensive food in a minute, though.
After lunch, we took a short walk around the neighborhood, then went to the local food stores to buy some basics to take back to the apartment. Mosman’s main street (I think), Military Road, features specialty stores like a butcher, a cheese shop, fruit and veggie stores, etc. There are smaller and larger supermarkets here as well, from what I understand, but I think it’s cool that the smaller guys have a chance, too. The most surprisingly expensive food item we bought, were a bunch of bananas, which cost us $8, if I remember correctly; the same bunch would have sold for $2 in the US. So, OK, lesson learned: bananas are obviously imported.
Once we were sufficiently loaded up with some food basics, and luxurious bananas, we dropped the food off at our apartment and set out again for a short walk down to Mosman Bay. But, this is starting to feel like a boorishly long post now, so I’ll save details about that walk for another post.
G’Day!
