Vivid Sydney

Just one more post for my marathon blogging day...

This fortnight is the Vivid festival of music, light and ideas.

I haven't seen too much of it yet, but hope to next week when feeling better.

The most obvious thing is how they're lighting up the Circular Quay and the Rocks areas. The pedestrian path over the harbour bridge was packed with everyone taking photos of the Opera House on Tuesday evening as I was running home. Didn't have my camera, but the official Vivid shot is below. looks like they have tie-dyed the Opera House!
The Museum of Contemporary Art is looking pretty funky too.
Think I remember ta similar thing on Buckingham Palace once?

Half marathon

17th May was the SMH half-marathon! I've had bad knees since last (UK) summer so wasn't sure I'd ever be able to do this, but 5 months of slowly building the distance back up (and great runs discovering lots of areas of Sydney) paid off.

It was my first half- marathon and I was hoping to do it in around 2 hours, and in the end came in at just under 1.48 which was in top 15% of female finishers so really very pleased!!! Adam did amazingly too, especially since he hadn't been able to train much and got a bad stitch but still 1.37!

It was a brilliant atmosphere, around 10,000 people started, so very busy but only a few areas where the crowd was slowing us down. The route was 2 laps around the CBD, taking in all the sites.I definitely want to do more now... would like to try for a full marathon if I had enough time to dedicate to the training (btw congrats again Sam for the London!)

Here's me passing the Harbour bridgeAnd I should be somewhere in this crowd!
More pics if they leave them up...

Hanmer Springs

We went to Hanmer Springs in the south island of New Zealand, just 2 hours north of Christchurch, over weekend of 10th May for Adam's birthday.We really loved what we saw of New Zealand, have to go back soon! Hanmer was a really cute little village with some big walks that start from there. And the thermal springs and great pubs after a day of walking were brilliant too!
It was about 2 degrees most days and snowing which adam loved! And the people were so friendly, the couple who ran the Settlers Inn Motel http://www.settlersinnmotel.co.nz/ were great, beautiful rooms too, would recommend staying there!We went up mount isobel (1300m) which was a beautiful 4 hour walk, the snow got quite thick and extremely windy in places, but brilliant views.
It was rainy one day so we did quad biking, you can do all those kind of sports, bungy jumping, rafting etc from Hanmer - was a perfect break!

Ballet at the Opera House

On their last day in Sydney Marilyn and I went to see an australian ballet production at the Opera House, well extracts from 3 Russian ballets - Firebird, Petrouchka and Les Sylphides. It was amazing to see inside the Opera House and it was great for me to see 3 extracts as I haven't seen many before.

Firebird was my favourite as it has such unusual costumes.Les Sylphides was just beautiful to watch though and what I imagine of more classical ballet.Petrouchka was more of a funny story about magical puppets in a russian village which was really a bit freaky!

Hawks Nest for Easter

It is a bit of a rainy weekend and we both have colds so finally got round to updating my blog!

For the long weekend over Easter we went to Hawk's Nest with Adams mum and dad who were over for a holiday. It was about 3 hours drive north from Sydney, a small town on the coast in an area called Port Stephens.

I left it quite late to book, so there wasn't much accommodation left, but the place we had was OK even if it looked like something out of the 1950s with the crotcheted doilies! The location was fantastic though, right across from the river.I would definitely recommend the area for a short break. We really enjoyed the boat trip across to Nelson Bay, where we saw a few dolphins. We realised afterwards that the dolphins even came up the river and we could see them from our front window!We tried looking for koalas in the reserve, couldn't see any but told they are there.

The walk up to the top of Yacaaba Head is well worth it for the amazing views,
and walking back along the beach we saw this unusual cloud formation which was very apt for Easter Monday!

Top Gear Live!

We went to the Top Gear Live show yesterday. I'm not so into cars but Adam is and I find Jeremy Clarkson quite funny so thought it could be good!

It was boiling hot so we didn't stand around looking at the cars outside acer arena for too long and went to take our seats.

The whole thing is highly sponsored as you'd expect and contains so much advertising, but I actually really enjoyed the live ads prior to the show beginning. Navman did a live piece with a couple arguing over directions then the 'Navman' walking down through the audience singing a love song and giving the couple a GPS which of course fixed their whole relationship! And Audi did a great dramatic piece with the arena lighting and Audi circles flying everywhere.

In the actual show itself, was quite similar to the TV show, they had the Cool Wall, and spent quite a while making jokes at James May's expense (who wasn't their with Jeremy and Richard).

The best bits I thought were the car football (bit of a shame the England team lost against the Aussie cars - there were only about 6 of us cheering england on in the audience!), and the 4 motorbikes who drive around inside a metal sphere!
Would definitely recommend it!

More surfing!

Battered, bruised and sunburnt after today's surfing, but really enjoyed it still!

Think I am improving too, stood up for at least 2 seconds today ;-)

Have decided Narrabeen is my favourite place to surf, we've been there a couple of times now and although it's a bit further out, it is pretty much empty compared to Manly and there is loads of free parking.
The surf was breaking quite close to the shore and it was low tide so we were able to stand in the water and just jump on when we saw a good wave. I am using my new technique for getting up when I remember, and it seems to be working a bit better.

Australia Day surf rowers!

We had an extra day off this week to celebrate Australia Day!

According to http://www.australiaday.vic.gov.au/history.asp Australia day "celebrates the anniversary of Captain Arthur Phillip unfurling the British flag at Sydney Cove and proclaiming British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia on 26 January 1788".

There was lots going on around the city, big BBQs in the parks, music performances, and a few aborginal ceremonies too.

We went over to Dee Why beach and had Australia Day breakfast with lots of bands playing, flipflop (thong) throwing competitions and everyone dressed in aussie colours and flags.

Then we headed over to Freshwater beach to see a different side of it. Freshwater was hosting the finals of the NSW Australian Surf Rowers competition. Really fun sport to watch, you have 4 people rowing and 1 'sweep' steering the boat from the back. They're rowing directly into the surf to a buoy and then back to the beach, which means no matter how well a team has done so far, a wave can come and push them over or push them back ahead of the others. Sometimes they all get knocked out of the boat even! There were teams from all the NSW beaches there. Apparently if you're in a surf rowing club, you also have to do a certain number of hours of lifesaving duty on your beach, and you have to train every morning 5am. That's some dedication!
lebrates the anniversary of Captain Arthur Phillip unfurling the British flag at Sydney Cove and proclaiming British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia on 26 January 1788

Organising blogs

Decided I need to seperate out our Aussie adventures and my more work orientated thoughts.

So I've picked up a blog I started a while back for posts on online experiences, sites I like, product management thoughts etc http://nickijb.blogspot.com/. Finding it really interesting to compare the industry here in Aus to back in the UK, many different factors involved, creating some similar needs and some very different.

The big barbie

The coal barbie Sam gave us has been doing well, and will be great for camping trips, but we thought we needed something a bit bigger to really get into Aussie culture!

So we bought our 4 burner gas BBQ with heating area, hot plates and lid for roasting! Adam is getting quite into chef mode.

Tried it out last weekend with Will and Rachel, and tonight will be trying out the hot plate with the shrimps with Adam's brother Matt!

Hunter Valley

We spent a few days in the Hunter Valley wine region after NYE.

Adam had booked a lovely cottage for my birthday present. The people who owned the farm we stayed on were really friendly, and had a funny labradoodle who wanted to play all the time; we were her friends forever after we gave her a bit of bacon in the morning!


We went out to a few of the vineyards a did a bit of wine tasting and bought a few bottles! Found one lovely estate, the Wandin Valley, which we might join as members. There's no joining fee, you just buy 6 bottles every 3 months for a discounted price, then you can stay there for free for a few nights a year. They also invite you up to pick the grapes and stamp around on them which sounds like fun! The Fatso's Revenge red we particularly liked - tasted nice and I always like a bottle with a nice picture on the bottle ;-)
It is quite an isolated area though, you definitely need a car to get around (or book a bus trip if you're going to taste a lot of wine!) . But there are a lot of tourists and we realised to late that we should have booked in somewhere for Saturday dinner.



I really enjoyed the horse riding at Hill Top. We saw loads of grey kangaroos in the fields which felt proper Australian. We tried trotting a few times, I'm sure mine was galloping though, it felt very fast to me! ;-)

NYE in Sydney

We were invited to a brilliant cocktail party by some friends just down the road for new years eve. Their flat is a bit higher up and futher along than ours so we had a brilliant view of the fireworks.

there were 2 sets, one at 9 and another at 12 - apparently 5 tonnes in all! they had 4 different sets going off at the same time on the bridge and then on barges up the river, really amazing although my camera wasn't great at get pics of it.

The party was particularly unique because of Will and Rachel's chinese lanterns which we set off at midnight, really beautiful. Thankfully the people in the flat downstairs were able to catch mine and set it off again before it started burning down the houses. Will's BBQ skills have to be noted too!

Blue Mountains - Wentworth Pass

We went on a trip up to the Blue Mountains - about 1 1/2 hours from Sydney in the car.

They are called mountains but they'remore like canyons and gorges, from the bottom of which the top does seem quite high! It's called the Blue Mountains since the pines make a kind of blue-ish haze, very dense jungle type areas and lots of really beautiful waterfalls.

We went to an area called Wentworth falls and walked along the Wentworth pass to Empress falls. The first part of the walk is quite touristy by the falls, then you start to go down some extremely steep stairs and ladders to get to the bottom of the canyon. They're the reason for the 'hard' grading in the walk book I think, the rest of the walk is not too bad and only about 6k. It takes about 3 hours though with all the ladders and having a paddle in the pools and the bottom of the falls!

A map of where we went is here, but bewarned the stairs are quite tough!

Boxing day walk

We went for a walk from Mosman along the coast past Taronga. Stopped off at a small beach near our house called Athol Cove I think, it was a really hot day but the water is still pretty cold so didn't manage much of a swim.

Xmas day in Bondi

We had a lovely christmas day with Adam's brother Matt and over in Bondi with some friends, Ryan cooked an amazing roast dinner!

4wd

Cars a pretty expensive out here, I think it must be to do with importing them and all the tax.

We set out to get a small honda jazz or something, but ended up with a Nissan Xtrail 4x4!

I do feel a bit of environmental guilt but it will be great to go out to the mountains with and to get over to Manly with surfboards (have to learn to surf now!)

I'm finding it easier to drive than I thought, although parking is still a bit of a problem. It has already proved it's worth though after a massive trip to ikea showed we could fit so much in it - a bit more practical than the honda 2000 was!

Can't wait to do a trip up to the blue mountains now.!

Mosman sunsets

We've finally got broadband at home so will have to make up for lack of posts.

We had a great sunset from the balcony the other day! Really beautiful. We're finding Mosman to be a little bit too quiet for us (might move to Bondi or somewhere after our lease is up) but this kind of thing makes up for it!

I love sitting out on the balcony, so peaceful :-)

Our place!

We moved into our place in Mosman yesterday! Really pleased to get in and i'm happy that Adam likes it as it was only me who saw the place! We ordered beds and a mattress to arrive yesterday, but the shop we ordered from, Harvey Norman, managed to mess it all up. Eventually, after numerous irate phonecalls to them, the warehouse manager brought us round half of the delivery at about 9pm. At least we had something to sleep on!

Got woken up around 5am by the cockatoos and other loud birds, but I don't mind too much yet! I went to a local yoga class which was hard work, but relaxing at the same time.

Today was really sunny, but we had to do more shopping for furniture. Managed to get a patio set, but still no fridge freezer which is going to make food shopping a bit annoying. Doesn't really matter though, as we've just put the patio set together and had the first beer out on the balcony! Watching the birds and the boats in the habour is really lovely. Here's a pic of a kookaburra sitting in next door's garden.Looking forward to heading off for a dinner in our local pub in a bit, it's about 20 minutes walk to get to the main area but not a bad evening for it :-)

Manly fish and chips

It was a pretty sunny day so we went back to Manly. Sat on the beach for a bit and watched
the surfers on the massive waves!

Then we went to the pub across the road for fish and chips. The best fish and chips I've
ever had I think. The fish was john dory, yum!