Woolloomoolloo...say that 10x fast

Our next door park, the domain...across that the world famous Opera House Don't mind the bats!

pretty sure batman lives in sydney

the view from #1103


the view slightly north, yup, harbour bridge and opera house...thx QIAGEN!

Since our stay in Bondi Jct was temporary, big C found us a spot for QIAGEN to pay for in Woolloomooloo. pretty sure that's how you spell it;). hilarious when we tell sydneysiders what suburb we live in, and they say, "huh? can you spell that?" actually i can, and will. learn. the Domain park is gorgeous (one uses that work a lot when describing sydney) as it's right on the harbour. there's quite a few walking/running trails, resident wildlife, and picnic spots. if you are lucky enough to visit, maybe we'll show ya a few. so, let's discuss the bats. what the hell. no guidebook has ever mentioned the bats. i guess there's a few things you have to discover for yourself...which is actually a good thing. literally thousands of fruit bats live in the domain. they migrate every night to Centennial park, which we get to watch from our balcony. when we take a walk through the domain, no else seems to think the bats are as cool as we do...but come on man! bats! they're crazy! seriously, gotham city must be sydney.

our new digs are solid. not quite as convenient as the junction, but much more scenic. it's affording us the chance to live the city life for a bit. this is fun, but i don't think either of us are city people. briana watches enough Sex in the City to make one think she may be a city girl, but after checking out the northern beaches, we aren't.

so we rented a car for a week to check out what we have been missing. after heading up to the northern beaches to have a look at a few apartments, yes, it is confirmed, sydney has quite a few similarities to SD. the northern beaches are just like north county SD. the place that everyone wants to live in, but do they want to deal with the traffic!?! i was on the verge of biting the bullet and buying a house up in glorious north county where i grew up, but then Oz came through and that was put on hold. and now, here we are, tens of thousands of miles away, and here's our new north county. heck, SD is even on the same parallel as Sydney...just in the other hemisphere. so we're in it to win it. after seeing a couple of really nice apartments up here, we though we should check out the local beaches to make sure it's sweet as. here's the run down. manly, yes, that's really the name of the beach, has a lot of men on it. bad joke. a lot of tourists though, too similar to bondi. moving north, there's freshwater beach. actually, just before that is north steyne, or north manly, but it's still the same beach, so we'll skip it. supposedly decent surf here, but i'm sure crowded with travellers as they've all taken the ferry from circular quay and never went back. anyways, freshwater looks like a cool beach to hang out on, and play skimball of course, but there's two big headlands locking this place into walled up surf i'm sure. next is curl curl, or curlie as they say. loooooong beach, which is great b/c the south end faces a bit north, and the north end a bit south. so on the south swells, which are prominent here right now, head to north curlie. around curlie's headland is dee why. this is a well known beach for it's barrelling righthand reef break. haven't seen it blow up yet, but it supposedly gets hairy, shallow and really good. the next headland is long reef, and it's supposedly sharky (more on this later), but a solid reef break on the right swells. just north is narrabeen, another famous beach of sydney. quite a few pros have come out of narrabeen...ozzie wright to name one off the cuff. north narrabeen is the spot, but i hear when it gets good, just pick a bank down the beach and get pitted. after narrabeen, there's newport, bungan, avalon...basically lots of beaches and lots of setups. slater has a house in avalon, so you know it's good up there (check youtube).

ok ok ok, get excited, our stuff is here, just went to go pick up a few items....including boards! grabbed the good old 5'10" KG Larry Mabile twinzer fish since the surf outlook didn't look so hot. thursday in maroubra was 2-3' with the occasional plus set. again, no bra boy attitude, but it probably gets a little local when the surf is actually worth yelling about. first experience surfing, and there are some animals in the water here! jellies to be exact. i had seen the famous blue bottles on the sand, don't step on these, but there were jellies in the water as well. pretty simple, just gently lift your hand out of the water if you feel one while paddling, but still sketchy. that saturday, we hit Curlie, as we had seen a place in north curl curl that we wanted to rent. north curlie was picking up the south swell in the water, and though the reports were calling for waist to chest, it was easily head high. nice, they under call it here. the paddle out was a bit more hectic. i tried to go straight out to the lineup from where we we had posted up on the sand, but the current was blasting onshore, so it took a good 15 minutes, and what felt like 45 duckdives. not fun. felt like when you take a wave too far in and get stuck over the reef at hermosas in la jolla. brutal. especially for a guy who has only surfed once in 3 months! problem is, as you paddle out it gets shallow, deep, shallow then deep again. so the water sucks across these sand bars and you get to paddle for awhile. caught a few solid ones, did SD proud i think, and we headed home thinking this a place where we could live. next day, back to curlie, swell had dropped, but still fun ones to be had. water has really warmed up of late, back to 22C. less blue bottles on the beach, which means prime time for skimball! got some waves too, still really fun and standing up down the shallow banks. this time i watched where some of the locals had paddled out, ahhhhhh, you must paddle out on the north side of the bank, and then paddle south and pick your peak. excellent, that'll be a mistake i only make once.

note for nico, there's a huge dog park along the lagoon in curl curl beach...you'll be there soon, bff. special shout out to brad for taking care of my little buddy!

next week we're signing a lease at 34 monash parade, dee why, nsw. found a great place with an even better view. google map it, then get jealous;)...or just visit. we'll be waiting for ya...

shakeNbake

around Sydney (the Zoo!)

We weren't sure what to take pictures of the views from the zoo or the animals...

Aussie pride

just letting ya know not to get too close

they say a zebra's stripes are as unique as our thumbprints

it was a hot one in Sydney:)
we'll have to watch ourselves around the local lakes and streams

i mean, if you are in sydney for any amount of time, ya gotta visit the zoo eh? it's right on the harbour, you can take a ferry there, there's bound to be animals most people have only read about...sign me up! hmmmm, wait a second. san diego has one of the best zoos in the world...not to be a zoo snob, but moms took us to the zoo many many times growing up...zoo snobs?! hopefully not. it was a great spot. sydney has the whole experience well worked out. of course we found discount tix on the net, took the subway down towards circular quay (pronounced key), hopped on the ferry, and then took an aerial tram to the zoo entrance. so at this point, we're pretty satisfied. trains, boats, things flying through the sky...yup, very worth it so far. the zoo was great, even for these zoo snobs. hippos, pandas, meerkats, hawks, seals...and no one was there!!! for those that have been to the SD zoo, it can get crowded. not Taronga...empty. the only bummer was the food. we got our first burgers in sydney, and, ewwww, beetroot. not fans. and it makes your cheese pink! no good, we tossed the beetroot, chowed the rest and hunted for the platypus. after a glorious ride back, we were off to the meriton...

Bondi Junction to Bondi beach

Bondi Beach, gorgeous first beach day in Oz, I think we're gonna like it here...

on the coastal walk, Bondi to Bronte

well, well, well, we have finally arrived in the land down unda. gotta say, always fun in SE Asia. would go back again, probably will go back again at least once before heading back to the States.

so we snuck into the Meriton Serviced Apartments in Bondi Junction for a couple weeks on the company. it's nice and convenient. there's a subway stop below our place, as well as a junction stop for all the eastern beaches. that's right, each beach has their own bus line...Bondi, Bronte, Coogee, Maroubra...direct from downstairs. now this has been key as we don't have a car, so it's been relatively easy to explore. not being able to be this close to beaches with surf without getting antsy, we were off to Bondi asap...as you can see from the pics. the surf has been...well, disappointing. not to worry on our end though, no boards have arrived yet. there's a surfshop down the street which has a board tempting me, but i have to wait. especially at these prices, they want $450AUD for a used board, $1000 for a new quad fin 5'10" fish...ouch. not terrible once you convert into USD, but geez...this surfshop is a few kilometers from the beach! bri still found a bikini i have to admit looked pretty good, so she picked it up and we were off to check our next beach, Bronte. having heard of this one as well (yes, there are other beaches in sydney than bondi) since a couple pro surfers have come out of here, i was hoping for the best. there was surf, although it was generally flat, there were a few waves reforming on the inside of the beachie (what beachbreaks are called in Oz). a couple kids had it wired, and there looked to be a right hand reef point setup as well. however, i'm sure that point is REALLY crowded when it gets good. unfortunately, work has yet to supply a laptop and blackberry, so we have been making frequent trips to the local internet cafe around the corner. this is fine until 3pm, when 20 high school kids roll in to get their internet gaming on....sweet! the other nice thing about bondi jct is that there is a westfield mall across the street. yes, the same westfield that is famous for a few of our malls in Cali. there is a target there, however, not quite the same as in the states. however, on our third trip, we found a skimball...sweet! this is something we should consider importing to the states. it's a crazy invention of a ball that skims on water!!!?!! how does it work, we'll never know;), but it is fun to throw each other into the shorebreak. the last beach on the list (coogee is more of a bay and really busy on weekends) is maroubra. for those that have seen the Bra Boys movie...yes, that beach. i expected the locals to be out in force, but, like everything else in the movies...a bit exaggerated. gorgeous beach, and i could imagine that property has blown up here as it is really expensive around the rest of the eastern beaches. this is the cheap beach area, and a 2/1/1 is still close to $500K. unfortunately, you can't go positive buying one of these units and renting it out...kind of like a place we used to live. dammit, it's been discovered. get a deal, buy a top of the line 2/1/1 unit for $450K, put 90K down, owe ~$2000/mo...and the rent you may be able to get is still under $2000. ahhhhh, welll, it does rain here more than SD, so be OK with paying rent. at this point, i hate paying some else's mortgage...but ya gotta look at the bigger picture here. anyways, maroubra is nice, a bit rundown compared to the other eastern beaches, but still livable in my eyes. just a little spicier eh?

rockNroll

Same Same

island time...get on it

snails come big around here.

damn sweaty trail, but then we jumped in one of the pools of the waterfall and were quickly cooled. sandals were not the brightest idea though.

oceanview? nah, we'll take oceanfront thank you very much. after I ease into my hammock, please pass me my book. thanks Jungle Hut Bungalows.

So made it after many forms of transportation. We got up early to take the local bus back to Phuket town from Kamala beach. We had heard it was slow, so we left ourselves 2 hours to go 45 minutes...which was a good thing b/c we pulled into town 15 minutes before our bus left...sweet! We were definitely sweating and crossing our fingers that we were close for the last 15 minutes, and it turned out all good. FYI, the bus is 25baht/person, and a taxi is 500baht. With the extra $ and experience in our pockets, we grabbed some snacks and the front seats on the bus which has the most legroom. We arrived at the port 5 hours later (wasn't that bus supposed to have a/c? geez) and hopped on the ferry. When we got off, we hopped in a taxi that was a flatbed truck with bench seats in the back...which was fine until it didn't move for 5 minutes. After pleading with the driver, he said we go, but then just did donuts in the dirt parking lot. This was fun at first (for me, tho I don't think Bri was amused), but then we demanded that he stop, we got out and paid another guy to leave right now. They like to wait to fill up their truck with tourists all headed the same way and, apparently, wasn't happy with us wanting to leave now. The drama left behind us, we were off to find one of those fabled beachfront bungalows. In Haad ChaoPhao, the first place we saw wanted 1700baht for beachfront and didn't have any available. However, there was an older unit just off the sand but with oceanview for 450, fan only though. Hmmm, we'll take it. Once she left, we plopped our bags down and decided to walk down the beach to check out our new home. Just down aways, we noticed other establishments had beachfront units which looked empty. We found out that those were available for 1000baht. Hmmm, hold the phone! I told the lady we'll stay for multiple nights if we can pay less (can't tell ya how much, you'll have to do your own negotiations if you find this island paradise someday;), she said sure and we went to go grab our bags out of the first place. It was a great move as we had an oceanfront cement bungalow with a/c, two balconies and a fabulous view. After checking in, we headed up to their restaurant for dinner, and were treated to some excellent home-cooked Thai food. mmmmmmmmmmmm. Fried noodles with prawns, or will it be green curry and rice, or maybe the special of the night, BBQ'd KingFish? Too many choices, all of them good. So good in fact, that we ate their for like 8 meals straight! Definitely the most times either of us have been to one restaurant.

to be continued...fingers are tired...