a girl with wanderlust: A Saturday

27/01/07 – Saturday

Up early for a run and then off to hit some of the many other markets that Sydney has. I went to Glebe market, which is to the west of Sydney and sort of to Bondi market which is pretty much on the beach at Bondi to the South east of Sydney.

Glebe is very easy to get to, just jump on the bus (431,432,433) from the CBD and they take you to a stop right outside the door. It seems that most of the markets in Sydney are hosted in local public school yards, which means that you can use the kiddie sized outdoor toilets for the call of nature, but also for getting changed if you are trying on many of the lovely things you can buy at the markets. Glebe is not as ‘smart’ or as up-market as Paddington, but it does have a lot of new artists and makers displaying their wares there. It is a bit more hippie, with lots of second-hand contributions to stalls, as well as one off hand made goodies. It’s more like Flip, or how Filp used to be in Glasgow, with collections of slogan t-shirts, and American clothing. I didn’t stay long, as I had no money and didn’t see anything I wanted to get this time, but I’ll definitely be back again in the future for some bargains and some original clothing pieces.

One thing I did see which caught my eye was a book called ‘Bitter is the new black’, just the title sounds good to me. From a quick glance at the back, it seems to be a memoir of a rich society girl who falls from grace and her various challenges post fall. Seeing as I joined the library a couple of days ago, I’m going to see if I can borrow, and then report back on it’s being any good or not.

I have just finished reading ‘The Bridges over Madison County’. I know! Pretty smaltzy, but it was cheap in the charity shop, and one of about a thousand that seemed any good (unless you like sci-fi of course!). So I hold my hand up; the book doesn’t have much substance to it, it’s very stylised romance, but in the end I did cry. What a sucker!

So after Glebe, I headed back to the city (Glebe seems very nice in general by the way, and I plan to go back to just have a wander around. All the neighbourhoods here have very different personalities, and it will be good to get to know them. People don’t tend to go out in ‘town’ here, they kind of stick to their own backyard, or head to one of the other suburbs), anyway, back to the city for a quick takeaway bite to eat, and then I decided to try and fit in 2 markets in one day. Not my best or brightest idea. To get to Bondi, I suppose there are a number of different ways, but the way I know involves going on the train. This takes you to Bondi Junction and then to get to the beach itself, it’s about another 20 minutes on a bus. When I got out at the station and found the stand for the buses I knew I was supposed to get (380, 381, 382), I was overwhelmed with people. There are SOOOOOOOOOOO many people who want to go to Bondi on the weekend. SOOOOOOOOOOO many people. The bus/train interchange station was a mess with lots of bus attendants shouting out, ‘This way to Bondi, this way to Bondi’. There is a special bus you can get the 333 which is like an express service and goes from town actually, but I thought I would be a smart arse and go on one of the others I mentioned above, and that way I would miss most of the crush. Idiot! When I did eventually get on that bus, it was mobbed too and I had to stand in a surfie/bikini/tourist crush until we got to the beach. Nice.

This is where it goes a bit wrong. Got to the beach. I stayed on the bus. I know where I am going I say to myself, I’ve looked at the map, I know the names of the streets I am looking for (don’t know if I have mentioned before that they are really not the best with street names around here? Very hard to see them if they even exist!). So I stay on the bus and I stay on the bus….not seeing any familiar street names, and no obvious market stalls, but I know that the market is on, because it is on every weekend – I did my research! And I stay on the bus….in the end I stay on the bus and never set foot in Bondi. It just seemed easier to stay on the bus and be driven through some of the suburbs, than to get off and find where I should be. It was fairly interesting too, and a good way to get they layout of the city and see new suburbs to see if they have anything interesting to offer. Unfortunately for my plan, the bus was terminating early and I got stranded in Dover Heights. There is nothing interesting in Dover Heights. Nothing. And the buses that take you back to the city don’t come that regularly either!

So first of all, I wait at the wrong bus stop and when the bus comes, the driver kindly tells me that. Then I move to the correct bus stop and the bus takes forever to arrive. All the while I am thinking, time is getting on, I’d really like to be watching the womens tennis final. Serena is going to win, I know she is, and I would like to see that happen. Eventually a bus does arrive and I begin the long journey back to the CBD (which happens to be pretty handy for me, because that’s exactly where I want to go – they are showing the tennis on a massive outdoor screen down at the Opera House, so that you can sit on the steps and watch with hundreds of other people. It is awesome) and this time, I get seat on the bus. But the clock is ticking….tennis! I’m also starving because I haven’t had much in the way to eat, and I really need a drink of water too!

Make it back to the CBD after an hour on the bus – the beach is a long way away and of course there is traffic and bus stops to contend with! I hot foot it down to the OH hoping to get food on the way, but no luck. The tennis score makes up for that though – what a match! Enjoyed that, but the weather was closing in a bit by that point, so I was a bit chilly to say the least. Tennis done, I decided that food and heading home for some more clothes were number one priority. Trying to get food in the CBD was impossible though! (well the mall I tried anyway) The whole place was closed up and it was really creepy, like one of those horror movies where the lone girl in the mall gets eaten by some sort of supernatural being or something – I even went to the toilet by myself in the creepy mall – how brave am I!? (or foolish, but needs must). So no food again, and as the mall is part of the station (they are really big on that too – combine 2 things in 1) I decided to head home.

Oporto chicken did the trick. It’s a chicken burger bar place, which is huge over here and has been recommended to me as serving good burgers (a dubious honour). It was alright and definitely filled the spot. Then decided to head to another mall with Zain because he wanted to email and I wanted to shop (well window shop at least, so that I can see lots of things I really want, but can’t afford to buy!). We got to the mall around 4.15ish and everything was closing up for the day – it’s Saturday for crying out loud!!! Why don’t you want to make any money! Zain emailed and I ended up reading my new book, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, by Mary Wesley. It’s pretty good too, just started. I quite like her books though.

Quiet night in with rubbish Australian TV and their hilarious adverts. One that springs to my is the Irish car insurance sold by a Scots man – get it right!

Also tried out a new weekend newspaper as the Sydney Morning Herald didn’t publish one this weekend, because they were all on holiday – look at that for a country and a business! So I tried the Weekend Australian. This is definitely the thinking Australians paper, with lots of quality writing and reporting, but just a touch short of the glossy magazines that you really buy the weekend paper for. Would buy again though (if I actually wanted to know what was going on in the world – might just stay in my bubble though?)

Observations/irritations (!):

Dates: They do this crazy thing with the pronunciation of dates here. They say ‘Watch our new programme on January twenty five and I can’t help but shout at the TV - It’s twenty fifth not twenty five! Arg

Rounding: They round up (or down) your money here because they don’t have 1 or 2c. I find this quite annoying frankly! Get some more coins! I mean, I know they would be completely pointless and no doubt very irritating in their own right, but they just assume you are ok with paying $30 and not $29.99 (I do realise I’m being ridiculous by the way)

a girl with wanderlust

Monday, January 29, 2007

A Saturday

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