Finally arrived in Sydney

......continuing from Melbourne.
From Melbourne we finally went to Sydney on the 30th of May. It was only a few hours flight from Melbourne that went by uneventfully. From the airport we took a taxi to our hotel where we would stay for the next 2 days. We stayed in the Old Sydney Holiday Inn. From the view of our hotel room there was no mistake about it. We had arrived in Sydney!!!

It was good to be back in Sydney and it seemed like we had never left. We knew the area around the Rocks well because we used to live just off Martin Place for 4 months. And the 'do you remember when we/I...?' were around every corner.
The Botanical Gardens were also great to see again too. We shared it with a whole flock of noisy Sulphur Crested Cockatoos when we were there.

Although our hotel was nice and we really enjoyed our time there we had to move to our new home for the time being. It was a self catered apartment on Bond Street in the CBD which we had let for a month. It looked just like a hotel room because it was part of the hotel, without the housekeeping and room service.
Then we started looking for a place to live and do all the administrative stuff (Medicare, drivers licence, bank accounts, etc), again the weather had caught up with us. The worst storm NSW had seen in 30 years hit us.

(Needless to say we were glad we didnt go to Manly that day)

On top of that there is/was a housing shortage in Sydney which meant some people look for months before they find anywhere to live. And the way it all works here with viewings only in time slots of 30 mins on a Saturday between 10.00-14.00 with 10-15 people queuing to watch one property our chances of even finding a house were slim to none. But we found one purely by chance walking into an estate agent who was about to show a townhouse to someone else if we cared to look at it. And we liked it, it was far better then the other houses we had seen before. The street we are at is parallel with a busy shopping street, but the great part is where we are it feels and is like being in the middle of suburbia, hardly any traffic/people deserted almost. Another nice feature of the area with water on either side of us is you can go to the heart of the city by ferry which we plan to do when summer is here.
The suburb we live in Sydney is called Five Dock (Google map).
And because the house came unfurnished......

...........the race was on to buy all our furniture and have it delivered ASAP. Not to mention all the other stuff we needed from bins to teaspoons to mattress covers to you name it. On the bright side everything is new and to our liking.
But every once in a while you find you are still short of a certain item. Especially when cooking. We went to the Dutch shop in Smithfield 't Winkeltje to stock up on some frikandellen and kroketten almost as soon as our fridge arrived........and then you find yourself without a deep fryer.
After weeks of waiting we finaly received our sofas. We dont have to sit on the benches we use for the dining table any longer.

And today all our stuff from the UK arrived. Minus one paperweight we bought in Death Valley , but we had declared it and that was seized for quarantine reasons. Leaves us to unpack it all. It almost feels like Christmas.