Emily and I have been in Sydney for about a month now. We have been living in Stanmore, Wollstonecraft, and now Elizabeth Bay. We started in Stanmore, an inner west suburb for our first three weeks in a very small city apartment . From Stanmore we had a front row view to the approach of Sydney's airport. Resting on my pillow my pillow, I could see the logos on the underside of the wings on the plains as they buzzed our roof: Qantas, Jetstar, Tiger Airways, et el. From 6am to 11pm we had constant aircraft noise, making conservation with another person in the same room sometimes impossible. When we were not having problems communicating with humans we were communicating with the spiders to go away! We had two large Hunstman spiders visit our kitchen, one resting on the soy sauce at the same time we needed that bottle of sodium for our sushi, sending Emily across the room like a Samurai on full inverse banzai. The Stanmore apartment was super tiny and we never really unpacked our bags. The car was always full of stuff and we were constantly worried about getting a ticket in the two hour parking on the street we were staying on. We did not have a resident's parking permit (that's another story!)
Last week we stayed in Wollstonecraft, near North Sydney. It was an amazingly clean house with heaps of space on a quiet street. The back of the house had a balcony overlooking bush like setting of a public park. Birds were chirping and no parking hassles. We agreed to stay one week because we put money down for a apartment in Elizabeth Bay and just needed a place to crash. We were relaxing, watching the sunset on our first night when we met one of our flatmates. He was middle aged and turned out to be really creepy. We were expecting privacy and all this guy wanted to do was pepper Emily with questions and act like I was not even there. Things got worse later in the week when the landlady informed us that we needed to leave the room by Friday at noon, which was a real problem because we both worked all day. We were moving into our Liz Bay place Saturday which left us nowhere to live Friday night.
We ended up staying at Emily's friend's house in Newtown which turned out to be an epic disaster. It turned out to be a party house and we had to wait for everyone to drink and go out before we could claim the broken futons in the lounge room we were expecting to sleep on. After wiping potato chip crumbs off the cushions we discovered that overnight road works were underway, including someone using a concrete saw right under the lounge window for several hours. I worked early that Saturday and Emily was woken up by the flatmates cooking vodka omelets at 8 am. We finally moved into out own apartment in Elizabeth Bay last Saturday afternoon.. We enjoy the place, it's a little old, but in a central location, only two stops from the CBD, and has a nice park nearby. Parking is a problem which is no surprise but we were really shocked to discover a mold farm growing behind the entertainment center requiring several hours of cleaning. We have been through a lot the past month, moistly struggling to find a place to live and securing full time work. We have signed a sub-lease until January 29th and this place should give us a good base for more Sydney adventures.
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