Accomodations Part 2

Kitchen area from the living room

So, I'm going all out and posting 2 blogs today!  Here's some pictures of our apartment.

Living room/sitting area

Living room from the dining area

Living room and view of back yard

Reverse shot of the bedroom

back yard

private seating area in the back yard

Our kitchen

pretty self explanatory - bathroom!

Close-up of a flower that's covering a bush in the driveway

view from the front window

self-portrait in the bathroom - check out those guns

This one is for Oliver - is this the kind of bacon you were talking about?? - it's called "middle bacon" and it was very yummy!

Accommodations part 1

Our cosy room :)

Here are some pictures from the hostel that we stayed at.  It was aptly called "Somewhere to Stay"  and it was just that!  Thankfully I decided it would be best to stay in a private room (you could stay in rooms with 9 people in bunk beds for cheaper!!)  it was about $50AUD per night and it served our purposes.  There was a shared bathroom and 4 showers in the building we were in (there were two total - and I think the place slept around 100).  There was also a kitchen with large fridges where you could store your food in labelled bags - but there were lots of signs posted around warning that there was a "food thief on the loose"  and there were even a few threatening said "food thief"  It was a little disconcerting - Although we had a lock on our door, there was no lock on our window or a screen, so we opted to bring our laptops with us when we went out apartment hunting - which made for some frustrating walks in 30degree plus humidity weather!!

There were a lot of people staying at the hostel while we were there (apparently it's the high season for backpackers to come here looking for work while traveling - usually picking fruit)  It seemed like there were people speaking every language imaginable.  There were a lot of people from Germany and the Netherlands.  We found that it was quite crowded when it came to preparing our food in the kitchen - so it was fairly stressful to try to cook a meal - while vying for a spot on the stove and a corner to chop and prepare food!  Needless to stay - we were relieved to move to our own place

There was a nice storage area for all of our stuff in the room

This is the outside of the hostel at night

The hallway outside of our room

The view from our room

The River, City and some food stuff

Gorgeous tree by Brisbane River - not sure what kind it is but they're all over the place

So, I am happy to announce that we are now official apartment dwellers in Brisbane Australia!! (pictures our place to come soon)  We are renting a 1-bedroom apartment in the suburb of Taringa from a couple that are originally from Uruguay!  Now that we've had some time to settle in, we have taken a bit of time to do some sightseeing before James starts school (classes begin Nov. 28)  So here are some pictures from the city of Brisbane - one mode of public transportation is called CityCat and it goes along the Brisbane river that winds through the city.  So when we went on that I was able to snap some great pics of the city from a different vantage.

I have also posted some pictures from the grocery store (the main ones here are called "Coles" and "Woolworths" :)  I'm fascinated with how the grocery store is different and has products that I've never heard of before.  I must admit that I was overwhelmed when we first went into a grocery store here.  We had to buy some basic foods on our first night here and we were experiencing some culture shock - because of the time change +15 hours, extreme exhaustion from the 30+ hour of travelling, realizing that we were finally here on the other side of the world and not just for a visit, but for two years AND the fact that cars drive on the opposite side of the road!!!  I'm STILL not used to cars coming from the other side when I'm crossing the road :)

So, our first visit to the grocery store was extremely mind numbing to say the least.  James and I were walking up and down aisles trying to figure out the brands (there are some that are the same, but a lot are different) and attempting to stay on some sort of budget all while considering the fact that we were going to have to lug the food back almost a kilometre to the hostel we were staying at!  We both literally felt dizzy trying to figure things out!


Thankfully, things have gotten much better in the grocery store department and we have started to figure out what brands we like here, but it's still a bit of an adventure when we head into a grocery store.  So I've attached a few pictures of things that were a little different here!

Crazy roots on a tree at the botanical gardens

We haven't really seen many spiders (I think the count is at 5 now), but I saw this yesterday while walking to the movies (it's not as big as it looks haha)  not sure what kind it is though...possibly a wolf spider??

View of the Central Business District (CBD) from the River

The Pedestrian bridge that runs from the CBD to the Brisbane State Library and Museum

Another view of the CBD

They have dog and cat food refrigerated next to the regular meat section - have to be careful not to buy the wrong meat!!

It's possible that we can get this in Canada, but I've never seen it before!!  I don't think I'll be trying it!! - this one's for you Robin :)

They don't keep the eggs in the fridge, just on the shelves in the main part of the grocery store!

A Stopover in New Zealand

When James got the final word that he had been accepted at University of Queensland or "UQ" as the locals call it - I began the search for plane tickets for the overseas trip to Australia.  I would not want to account for how many hours I spent searching for tickets - the fluctuations in prices were dizzying!  One night (after a few weeks of looking)  I found tickets that seemed to be the best price and time frame.  I selected the flight and purchased it that night.  It wasn't until the next day when the website sent me the confirmation that I realized that I had clicked on the wrong flight - still the same destination, but the second stopover had a 9 hour break between flights in Auckland, New Zealand instead of a 3 hour stop!

Needless to say, I was a little annoyed with myself!!  After contacting the website and finding out that it would cost way too much to change the last flight (over $200. apiece), James and I realized that maybe we could make lemonade out of lemons and visit New Zealand for the day!!

I was concerned about getting through customs, but that was pretty easy (we just had to make sure we didn't bring any food or illegal drugs (haha) into the country and we were through!  We left our bags at a check-in counter at the airport and took a 30 min shuttle bus into downtown Auckland.

New Zealand was formed by many volcanoes thousand of years ago - so the area in Auckland is very hilly and green (New Zealand is where The Lord of the Rings was filmed)  We didn't have a huge amount of time, since we needed to allow for time to get back through security checks - but we ended up having about 5 hours to explore the downtown area and go up the sky tower!  Here are some pics from the downtown area and our views from the sky tower.

One of the Ports of Auckland

I'm not sure what this bus was for, but I thought it was interesting!

At the top of the SkyTower

View of the harbour from the Skytower

View of the city and the hills from the Skytower

One of the life size models of an Orc from Lord of the Rings - James thought he could take him!

James Picking out a hobbit cloak to add to his wardrobe

Me being attacked by a black rider

I guess I don't quite measure up to the height requirements to be a stand in for Avatar

This is hard to read - but this map shows where in New Zealand all of the set locations were for Lord of the Rings

Downtown Auckland

Skytower behind Jimbob's head! We went up in that! :)

We're here!

So, after much planning, preparation and fenageling, we are in Brisbane, Australia!!!! 

Just to give a little background to anyone who doesn't know why we've traveled from Ontario, Canada to here - James finished his undergraduate degree in Kinesiology in May and wanted to pursue Physiotherapy - so when the opportunity for him to study in Australia came up we jumped at the chance and applied.  A couple of months later he was accepted at the University of Queensland and we sold a bunch of our stuff and stored the rest (more on that later) so that we could go on a big adventure to Australia.  

So here we are, we're currently living in a hostel in the "West End" of Brisbane and we have been here for a week.  We've started looking for apartments, adjusting to the climate and checking out the university campus.

The Great Court

The inside of The Great Court - St. Lucia campus.  This green space is right in the middle of the Queensland campus!

Our first sighting of a "Magpie" on campus - We were warned not to go near them because Magpies are known for dive bombing peoples heads - they're very protective of their nests - James has seen people wearing bike helmets with spikes coming out of them to stop magpie attacks!

Australian White Ibis - St. Lucia campus

One of many huge trees on campus