A Long Walk

The Spit to Manly Walk

On Easter weekend we went on the walk from the Spit Bridge to Manly Beach and of course took our camera, new photo geeks that we are. Its a great walk that winds along the northern coastline of the Sydney Harbour and gives some great views of the water and the city. Best of all we ended at Manly where we had a nice meal overlooking the beach. Next time maybe we'll try to walk back instead of cabbing it (Hey, its 10km each way!). You can see on the map below where the walk goes and an idea of what it looks like, or click here for a full screen view.

This weekend we're having a few friends over for a BBQ to end the summer in style. Love to you all.

Chocolate Bunnies

Happy Easter!

Sorry faithful readers that its been so long since we blogged last, but you can tell we've used the long weekend to catch up (in Australia we get Friday and Monday off). You can read below about some fun happenings at my office, our trip to the Blue Mountains, new art in our house, and lots of visitors. And of course, in honor of today, you'll see that the Easter Bunny found us (although there are no Peeps in this country so I'm so sad!)

We hope everyone is having a great holiday, and are looking forward to seeing many of you in a few weeks.

Aussie Art

Matthew Johnson's 'Radiance'

As most of you know, we bought a new house in San Francisco shortly before leaving for Australia. Of course in the rush of our lives, we never really moved in before leaving, and so we're very short on decorations. Part of what we want to do when we get back home is really "move in" and decorate the place, and we wanted to bring a bit of Australia home with us. A few weeks ago we bought a painting called Radiance by an artist called Matthew Johnson (click on the link for a biographical background). He's a pretty famous Australian artist (and the son of an even more famous one) and has done a number of really beautiful abstract pieces, usually involving many circles that blend together. We think the painting has a beautiful set of colors. We took some pictures of it hanging in our Sydney apartment, and can't wait to hang it in our kitchen back home. Special thanks to Tim Olsen at the Tim Olsen Gallery in Paddington for all his help getting this framed and to our house -- they've got a great gallery nearby and feature a lot of well known and up and coming Australian artists.

Tomato, Tomatoe

Tomato Day

One Friday we got a note on our door at work that said the following week a Korean Mobile Phone company would be filming a commercial in the alley behind our building reenacting the annual La Tomatino Tomato Fight Festival in Bunol, Spain. They brought in two tons of tomatoes and 25+ young (hot, I might add) Aussie kids to smoother themselves in the smashed fruits. Click on the photos to see the bird's eye view we had from my office of all the fun.

Blue Mountain Beauty

Blue Mountains March 2007

The Blue Mountains -- only 75 minutes away from Sydney and you feel like you are hours away in some remote wilderness. Last weekend we drove up to the Blue Mountains for some hiking (bush walking as they call it here) and gourmet dinning with our US visitors Adrian and Jomay and our Sydney friends Peter and Chantal. For the first time in six months we had to put on a sweater because of the nip in the air with "winter" soon approaching. (Winter is in quotes because it is like a LA winter here and for Carl if there is not two feet of snow on the ground it is not true winter.)

Adrian, Peter and Chantal are all really into photography and our hike ended up being more of a paparazzi moment on the mountain complete with lots of tips and tricks for taking great photos. Being camera novices we really appreciated the lessons. You will see in our photos some of the lenses used to capture the moments and beautiful landscapes of the Blue Mountains. The mountains actually get their name from an oily haze the Eucalyptus trees give off. Pretty spectacular!

As a new feature on the blog, we're trying out a new feature of Google Maps that lets you draw custom maps and include them in your site. You can check this out for a bit more info on where we went. To see the full map in a new window, click here.

Take several months off - everyone is doing it!

Pam and Simon Visit

Two of our friends have decided to take leave from their jobs and travel this great big world for several months. We are very jealous as you can imagine. Pam and Simon from the UK are on the road for three months while Adrian and Jomay from the US are travelling for six months. They both started their adventures in Australia and have come to stay with us. We have done our best to show them around Sydney or at least suggest several places to visit while we are slaving away at work. ;-) Click on the picture of Pam and Simon to see a few photos of us at the Opera House and also at our favorite place in Sydney - Max Brenner! I am not sure if we have blogged about this place but it's a chocolate shop with all things dreamy and chocolate to eat. You will know what I mean from the photos.

Quiz-o-rama

Tuesday nights in Sydney you can usually find me and Carl at the Fringe Bar in Paddington participating in a weekly Quiz Night with my co-workers. We battle it out for first place amongst other groups in a 40 question game with topics ranging from sports, pop culture, history, geography, music and science. The first time we went our group came in 8th place out of 12 teams (very sad state of affairs) the second time we played we added members to our team and tied for first place! However we ended up in second place after a tie-breaking best two out of theee rock, paper, scissor game. We were robbed but did get the second prize which is $50 dollars at the bar. That is how they keep you coming back -- well I come back because I am competitive and love to win. :-) The picture is from our "first place" night.