Australia meet France, France meet Australia. Mosman Village

Yesterday, Julie and I continued our never-ending quest to find the most suitable village/neighborhood/suburb for us to dwell. On hand was Mosman, specifically Mosman Village. Mosman is a large area, pretty much directly across the harbour from the Opera House. It’s next to Kirribilli (we visited that previously) and not that far (by car) from Manly Beach (also visited that area before). So what to say about Mosman….

We took a ferry to Circular Quay and thought we’d catch a ferry to Mosman. My knee was bugging me so we decided to cab into Mosman. It’s a pretty short trip across the harbour bridge though traffic made it a less than great experience. Still, we headed directly to the downtown area of Mosman known as Mosman Village.

Mosman is an affluent area within greater Sydney. The rub for many Sydney-siders is they consider it kind of “snobby” though we didn’t personally experience much of that. Of course, coming from Lake Oswego, Oregon, (where I quickly learned that yelling loudly at the refs during junior high school basketball is frowned upon :-| ) snobbery is something that is invisible to me. Does that mean we are snobs? Hmmmm…. makes me wonder. (not really)

Anyway, back to Mosman Village. First, it’s expansive. The main road (Military Road) seems to go on forever. It’s features a lot of cars on wide streets that are crowded with local boutiques and high-end designer clothing shops. Unlike Balmain (where we live now) there are very few pubs. It’s relatively flat for walking which I liked and has plenty to offer. The biggest problem is where it’s located… While Mosman is across the harbour from downtown Sydney’s CBD, Mosman Village is on the other side of the peninsula. Since we are living here sans-car that means a bus or a trolly to get to that area. The trade-off thus becomes, sacrifice water views in favour of shopping or sacrifice shopping for views. If you do the later it adds 30 minutes to any commute. Because of that we are going to rule Mosman out as a place to live.

Our experiences while in Mosman were great. I had the best crepe I have ever enjoyed (and I’ve bent to France) at a French-owned restaurant called Four Pigs. It was simply amazing. Buckwheat crepe with Smoked Duck, Cheese, Green Onions and some sort of savoury sauce. Oh god, it was good. Crepes Suzette for dessert (shared) wasn’t a bad way to end the meal either. We sat outside in a heated area and just loved it.

We shopped at bit without buying anything and finally ended up at a sports bar where Sydney was playing New Zealand in Rugby. The pub scene in Oz is quite different than the US. Notable differences include no bar stools. No tipping is another big difference though prices more than make up for the difference. People tend to go to pubs in groups and then sit with each other at a table. Everyone takes turns buying a round of drinks for the table so if you are a tea drinker, your coffee could end up costing you $50 if your with 5 other people. :-( People can get quite loud in the pubs and it’s almost appreciated. There are no waitresses/waiter so you go to the bar for everything you want. The American style of “hot” bartenders or food servers is clearly not in the plan. It’s not better or worse, just different.

It was a rainy day so we hung out there for a while before catching a bus back to Sydney CBD. We landed at The Rocks (reviewed that before too) and hung out there for a few hours as well. We love The Rocks…so much going on… so much to do. If you really need a “hot” quotient to make you happy have a seat at a sidewalk cafe and watch the parade of club goers all dressed for a night of decadence. Gheesh.

Today we are heading to an Aquarium to look at sharks and things just 5 minutes from where we live by ferry. Loving Sydney. Loving having Julie home everyday. Life is good.

About 7 more days of rain and 60’s and then it all turns for the beginning of spring and summer. Looking forward to that! Later blog stalkers.

Secretaries that STOP traffic

Meat raffle, Secretaries that stop traffic, Double Bay/Double Bay, and a Pneu Health update…. oh boy!

Double Bay Double Bay

Last weekend Julie and I struck out to explore the village of Double Bay. Mark (bro) had mentioned it as a place he had a coffee with one of his reps on a previous trip — he thought it was nice and relatively level. He had me at relatively level! So we caught the ferry to Circular Quay and then took the 10 minute ferry ride to Double Bay. Double Bay is (obviously) on the water — it might even be a bay? It’s an area of Sydney where money seems to begin settling in greater abundance — in fact, Double Bay is known as the village with the most exclusive/upscale shops in Sydney. There are only about 5,000 residents though the shopping area is quite large - obviously a destination for Sydney folks, especially those in the Eastern villages.

To give you a feel…. you get off the ferry on the wharf and are immediately greeted by a pub over water called the 18-footer club. It’s where folks drink and snack while waiting for their ferry - folks with 18-foot or greater boats are also allowed but only as members. ;-) It’s a hopping place full of happy people and some pretty exclusive shopping bags. You venture off the wharf, walk past a park, and within 4 minutes you are in the shopping and restaurant district. Lovely pubs and cafes, great shops full of famous designers as well as well regarded Sydney designers. The place had much wider streets than Balmain East (where we live now) and a much more ”current/upscale” vibe. There are plenty of beautiful homes and a fair number of apartments overlooking the harbour. All-in-all we loved it and moved it into the category of places we would move. The only drawbacks are ferry schedule (every 60 minutes) and a seeming lack of grocery near the apartment areas. On the upside, it close to CBD by ferry or bus, close to the beach (10 minutes) or Bondi Junction (western mega shopping area). Definitely a great place to spend our time here if it works out.

Meat raffle

As if to prove Balmain East is a bit less refined than Double Bay, on Sunday, we attended a meat raffle at the local lawn bowling club. $1.00 gets you 5 tickets in the raffle — we bought $5.00 worth and won 2 drawings. Conservatively, the meat was worth $60 - $80. The local group of lawn bowlers were away at a tournament so we had a great chance of winning one of the 12 drawings. Ummm, meat!

Health Update

I went to the Doctor on Monday for a follow-up. I’ve got about 3 more weeks of suffering ahead of me but the progress is definitely in my favour. She put me on some new/stronger medication, discussed allowable activities, and ordered me to two days of bed rest. Upon leaving I asked her, “what about sex” to which she replied, “I have patients until 3 o’clock but I’m free after that.”

Secretaries everywhere

I’m in the middle of my second day of bed rest and I hear helicopters and boat traffic and just a lot of commotion outside. I get up to see what is disrupting my slumber. As you can see from the photograph, Secretary John Kerry, Secretary Chuck Hagel and Prime Minister Tony Abbott are motoring past my sick bed with an armada of police in tow. Kerry and I shared a wave (seriously) and I went back to bed. Bizarre.

That’s all for now blog stalkers… things are good… weather not so much. WE CRAVE SUMMER!

Bros before.... well, everything!

Just said goodbye to my little brother. He’s off to his hotel and then tomorrow he’s on a plane back to his family in Wisconsin. It was such a welcome experience for Julie and I to spend time in Australia with Mark. Here’s a brief run down of the two days I saw him this week…enjoy!

Tuesday I saw him twice. I met him, and his Australian sales representative (Andy Knox) for lunch at Jamie’s Italian. Andy is a true Scot complete with a heavy Scot accent with quirky Australian words tossed in for good measure. He’s somewhere in his early 60’s and just a nice guy. Good sense of humour, hearty laugh, love of life. A real pleasure to join for lunch. How nice is it that we got to break bread together at Jamie’s Italian! I’ve long been a fan of Jamie Oliver though I’ve never eaten at one of his restaurants — I’ll be back.

Any restaurant where you get to sit next to hanging meat is a good place to eat!

For the starter course, we shared a bread starter, some baked mushrooms, and some crab and avocado bruschetta. All was truly wonderful — hearty, earthy and delicious. For our mains we each ordered something different though we sampled off each other’s plates. I had a truffle risotto (I know, right!?), Mark had a wild boar lasagne, and Andy had a pasta dish with venison and wild boar. We added a couple of sides for the table; posh fries which is basically french fries with parmesan and truffle oil (again, I know right!?) and some polenta with rosemary and parmesan. The sides and the mains were also wonderful. Finally, we also ordered dessert even though we were all pretty stuffed. I had tiramisu, Mark had lemon meringue pie and Andy had a brownie dessert. Truthfully, dessert was pretty marginal although Andy did manage to eat his entire brownie dessert. My tiramisu was one bite and done - really pretty bad.

I left Mark with Andy (they have to work after all) and headed home to await my grocery delivery. Mark wrapped his day and headed over to our place around 5:30 to spend the evening with us. I had the rather unenviable task of cooking dinner that followed Jamie Oliver. Suffice to say that no matter what I cooked I was not going to compete with Mr. Oliver. Still, my salmon with rhubarb sauce was pretty decent and the evening was simply great. Having my brother for 5 hours is something I don’t often get to enjoy and I relished every moment. Julie made a wonderful dessert to end the evening (Amaretti Peach parfait) and Mark headed out on the 9:43 ferry.

Today, Thursday, Mark returned to Sydney from Brisbane and made it over to the house for dinner around 6:00 pm. I made a shrimp, feta, pasta dish with peas and we had baclava for dessert. Julie made it home around 8:30 to join us for an hour and a half before Mark headed out again on the 9:43 ferry to his hotel. Again, it was wonderful to hang with my bro!

That’s about it. One of the things I love about Mark is the lengths he will go to, and the distance he will travel, to stay connected with family. That might be us in Sydney, Jenna in LA, frequent trips to the parents, you name it… he puts in the time and effort to be the best of our family. I’m blessed to have him in my life.

Bed time for me… have a good day blog stalkers.

Little Brother / Big Times

What a treat!

A wonderful weekend for this old blogger and his pretty little wife — my brother, Mark, in Sydney for the weekend leading up to a week full of work in Australia. It was simply wonderful as is the norm for Mark and I whenever we get together! The really neat thing for me about Mark — if he wasn’t my brother he’d be one of my best friends. He’s just great.

On with the details….

Saturday morning we met around 10:00 near his hotel at Circular Quay. Mark had just gotten off a long LONG flight a few hours earlier ( a flight without onboard entertainment — OUCH ), checked in at the Marriott, showered and met Julie and I for a day of making merry. We boarded a bus and headed down the coast to the town of Coogee. Coogee (Cud-gee) is south of Bondi and a favourite place of Sydney-siders to live along the beach. It’s just far enough south to miss the tourist crowds that jam Bondi beach and a lovely little place to be sure. The beach is full of large breaking waves and a nice boardwalk with plenty of shops and restaurants. We stopped for lunch at the Coogee Bay Hotel which claims to have the largest beer garden in the Sydney area. Lunch was pretty darned good even though I dropped a big piece of fried fish on my pant leg — how lucky for me there aren’t a lot of cats in Australia.

We ate a leisurely lunch and decided to tempt fate (fate meaning my bad knees and pneumonia riddled body) by walking north from Coogee toward Bondi beach, The walk (Bondi-Coogee beach walk) is a pretty famous 5 km trek famed for it’s beauty. It runs all along the ocean with some pretty amazing views and scenery. We stopped once for a coffee (Jeff) / beer (Julie and Mark) and had just a great time chatting, sight-seeing and exploring. Mark, “The Whale Whisperer” spotted a water spout from a whale and we had a lot of fun (pithy conversation included) exploring Waverly Cemetery. After about 3 1/2 km my knees were fried so we jumped a bus and headed to the train station in Bondi junction. We trained into the city and caught a cab to one of Mark’s favourite places “The Hero of Waterloo”. THOW is a really old pub with huge wooden beams and ancient stone walls and a trio of musicians that perform in the corner. The average age in the Trio has got to be 80 so it’s kind of quaint to be sure — we had a blast.

From there we walked a few shorts blocks back to The Rocks and enjoyed a few more beverages at The Argyle — a collection of restaurants and night clubs that are all super fun, really cool, and wonderfully swish. We laughed and chatted and just had fun kicking back enjoying the scene. Next door to The Argyle area was “Sake” — a Japanese fusion restaurant where we were lucky enough to snag a table. The food was so good — we just marvelled at every course — all 6 of them. One of the best meals I’ve ever had to be sure. Such fun.

We bid goodnight to Mark around 8:00pm and we headed home to recharge while he went back to the Marriott for some sorely needed sleep. He was a real trooper after that long flight. Harsdly even showed at all.

Sunday (today) we met again around 10:00 and headed off on a ferry to Manly Beach. Both Manly and Coogee are on our short list of places to live when our lease expires end of January. Manly is super lovely — probably the most like a southern California beach town of all the beach communities (except for maybe Bondi). Anyway, we went for a nice coastal walk sharing some sights that we’d seen before with Mark. It was awesome fun — sunny and brisk but not too cold). We settled in for a nice lunch beachfront and enjoyed some great conversation and a bit of work talk, etc. Fun, comfortable, just great.

After lunch we wandered about Manly looking at apartment buildings trying to get a feel for living there. Hard to say what will be available come summer (Feb 1) but it appears there are good options oceanfront that could really make for a nice lifestyle. It’s a relatively flat area which my knees would appreciate and there are plenty of grocery/shop/restaurant options too. Might be our leading contender thus far? We left Manly around 3:00 with every intention of hitting the fish market and making a nice dinner back at our place. My knees had other thoughts so we ended up simply ferrying back to Circular Quay, then a second ferry to where we live. We chilled there for about an hour and finally caught a bus into Balmain for an early dinner at the Monkey Bar. The Monkey Bar is a Parisian themed place near where we live and we had a really nice meal with some laughter and good conversation. A cab back home with a stop at the ferry for Mark and that’s it!

We might see Mark again for dinner on Tuesday, or Thursday, or both which will be wonderful too. I always say goodbye to my brother wishing we lived close to each other. I just love the little guy!