So, we made it to Australia! About 6 weeks ago, but we made it! We spent a lot of time getting life in order and now we are hoping to share with you our experiences: Hope you enjoy!
We arrived on a Friday and had a pretty mellow weekend, Al had to start work on Monday and we were pretty jet-lagged so this was helpful. I'd go through the whole saga of not having a phone and being stuck in our hotel room waiting for them to call us about being moved to a more comfortable room, but that seems less important now with hindsight. We hung out for awhile and were moved in the evening to our current room, which we have been happy with. I will share that we wandered for lunch that afternoon and the sushi at Sushi Junction was very good!
Al ended up taking Monday as an extra day before getting into the office and we used it to pick up the rental car and do some shopping together for household things. For those of you who don't know, Unilever is very kindly putting us up in a hotel for the duration of our stay and while the hotel has MOST of what we need, there were some items we needed to either upgrade or add to our apartment (especially in the kitchen). The first week was mostly getting the apartment in order and waiting for some items to be delivered that never came. The hotel staff now think we are obsessed with mail, but it's not the worst thing that they are now on top of it and know both of us by name.
We also had some issues (Greg mostly) with payments and not having an Australian billing address. Apple, Amazon, and Disney+ all use location services and tailor their applications for the region you are using it from so we needed to set up new accounts there, but couldn't do that without a bank locally, which we couldn't get until we had a tax file number, which was in the mail. Hence, the constant questions about whether or not we had any mail (on top of the items we ordered online for the apartment). Another thing we did not plan for well was the dependence on electronic devices and needed Australian outlet adapters. While we brought 4 adapters and a converter, we found we needed more (and the converter didn't work any more). This wasn't the biggest deal, but we had to go without our electric toothbrush for like 4 days... terrible, I know!
Anyway, that was all mostly wrapped up in the first 2-3 weeks and the apartment is almost completely set up the way we'd like. Just waiting on some photo prints we are planning to hang from our previous adventures together.
Speaking of adventures... we have been trying to do things each weekend (although Al is def the driver of this as Greg is a little more ok with having a lazy weekend now and again). Our first weekend we did the Coogee to Bondi Beach Walk. The walk was beautiful, it's about 7km (~4.3 miles) along the ocean, with small beaches/coves along the way. It was an unseasonably warm day (I think it hit 22 Deg C, which is about 70 Deg F) and Greg was not dressed appropriately, so it was a warm walk, but it was very nice! There were more steps than we expected, but we ended up at the famous Bondi Beach and stopped for lunch there. The following day we did a New City Orientation (set up by Unilever to help us get acquainted with our new home), which was mostly a driving tour of Sydney and the surrounding suburbs (we live in the Eastern Suburbs). The tour was great, but it was a lot to take in in just a single day.
The following weekend we made it into the Central Business District (CBD, basically downtown Sydney) for the first time and walked the Botanical Gardens. (Well, Greg played Pokemon Go, but Al actually took in the Gardens).
This is right next to where the Sydney Opera House is located and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Very cool to see those both up close and we plan to do the Bridge Walk at some point, I'm sure you'll hear about it here! Most other weekends have been filled with wandering the neighborhood or doing some shopping for the apartment (there always seems to be something we are missing) and not too Blog worthy, with a few local events drizzled in. We volunteered at the Sydney Folk Festival, went to the local aquarium, and went back to Bondi Beach for the Festival of the Wind (focused on kite flying).
Last weekend we had a slightly larger adventure into the CBD to the Sydney Tower Eye (it's the tallest building in Sydney, similar the Space Needle in Seattle in shape), where we did a Skywalk. The Skywalk is when you go outside the observation deck and literally walk around the building on a platform about a meter wide, mostly on the framing, but there is also a glass floor in some parts (never knew we were afraid of heights until we were about 300 meters above the street standing on glass looking down on it haha). We also enjoyed a lovely early dinner after the Skywalk. The restaurant was just below the Sydney Tower Eye Observation Deck and it rotated so you could enjoy the view of the entire city while you ate!
Anyway, this has been a lot more than expected to catch people up on. We have a couple more adventures planned, but you'll have to see them in the next post. Be well, friends!
Enjoy some photos:
Sounds like you guys are having a great time getting settled into your new Aussie life! Enjoy :)
What a great first post! Happy to hear that y’all are getting settled in nicely and already enjoying all the things that Australia has to offer ! Looking forward to seeing fresh Aussie PoGo postcards