coming together

sometimes, it all just comes together.

the players: piero’s mamma (maria pia) and fratello (andrea) are visiting from sardina. they have our spare room. crashing on our living room floor are our london friends dave and marta.

further up north, jaimee has touched down in brisbane for a mad 10-day visit of family, friends and home.

touring victoria are cynthia and gez – part of the london gang who now live in sydney.

the challenge: i want to catch up with jaimee, but i’m entertaining guests in sydney. gez and cynth want to catch up with mutual friends dave and marta but are holidaying in victoria. and piero needs to show his family some australian countryside.  

the solution: move everyone to the hunter valley wine region. and add a few more friends to boot!

i hired a 7-seater and drove piero, maria pia, andrea, marta and dave to the hunter. on the way, we picked up jaimee fresh off her flight from brisbane.

on saturday, cynth and gez arrived to take part in the day’s wine tasting. that night they headed back to sydney with jaimee who got her 9pm flight back to brisbane to continue her whirlwind adventure down under. perfect!

along the way we were joined by good friends emily, katie and melanie.  

was it worth that much coordination? i think the pics answer that!

the hunter valley highlights:

• we stayed at splinter's guest house in pokolbin
• we ate at botanica and mojo’s
• wineries i would rate are: scarborough, mistletoe and ernest hill.
• heading there, we drove the tourist route from sydney and on the way back we went via lake macquarie (the actual lake that is, not the town), the entrance and showed our european mates something they don’t always see: the pacific ocean.



changing seasons

the symbols of winter appeared. overnight. unannounced.

i found myself stopping. looking. mentally taking stock. the seasons were changing. was i ready?

you see in london, the approach of winter is fearful. my birthday always fell during that awful october week when british summer time ended, the clocks went forward an hour and darkness fell at 430pm. around the corner lurked winter chill, long-lasting colds and an unforgiving blip in london’s joie de vivre.

today, i sat at tigers bakers cafe, pondering the above. and then it hit me: i’m in sydney! winter isn’t to be feared. the lead up to winter is beautiful – the chill arrives with a freshness, leaves turn a beautiful orange and the sun still shines. truly, one of life’s greatest pleasures must be sunshine on your face during a winter’s day.

on the way home, i passed the symbols of winter which kicked started this entry; they are the rugby posts in the park opposite. you see, back in high school, after the easter holiday, the oval’s prized cricket pitch was left to fade while rugby posts were erected at either end of the field. until i saw them in rushcutter's bay park i had no idea i associated them so strongly with winter. i guess they are just another lifelong spill over from my five years of higher education.

the rugby posts in rushcutter's bay park

sunshine on a winter's (ok... autumn) day

would you like a discovery with that?

discovering is one of life’s best experiences. it’s the feeling that something wonderful is before you, anything is possible yet the tangible presence is tantalising close but still unknown.

one reason i loved london so much was because i was in a discovery stage of my life. every new street, every new experience and every new person could reveal more about the city i was falling in love with and more about a person who i was beginning to better understand, me.

nowdays, the discovery is less intense. i’m in a new city but a city that is not that unfamiliar to me and while self-discovery still happens , it’s certainly not to the same magnitude or surprise as what i experienced in the uk.

a couple of nights ago, piero and i went to the winery on crown st - it’s the sister restaurant of one of our local favourites, the gazebo. the place is an amazing discovery! it’s an outdoor-indoor venue that sits on a slightly raised position overlooking the city. piero and i happily sat there, staring at the skyline and taking stock of the last 6 months – from london to sydney via south america, flat hunting, mortgage hunting, job hunting, the amazing cast of people on the journey with us and all the emotions we experienced. it was lovely and rewarding to reflect on the journey we took and all our discoveries on the way. it was also great to do it in a venue that we can now add to our sydney discoveries list.

take off your clothes and show me your typeface

love to love you baby...oooooooohhhhh!

that donna summer’s anthem sums up my feelings for smiths on bayswater – butchers & wine merchant, my fav local restaurant.

i love everything about it – the food, the service, the name, the is-it-casual-is-it-formal-vibe, the interior design, the throwback black-and-white-floor-tiles and even the type font!  

as piero said in his tripadvisor review: 'Overall a great place: try it and you might find yourself hooked!'

all aboard popeye

sydney is all about the harbour. if you’re not near it, staring at it or on it, you’re simply not sydney. and that is something we’re just not prepared not to be.

having a flat that overlooks the harbour means we’ve got the near-it and staring-at-it criteria ticked. all we had to do was find a way to conquer the third. the answer? jet boating!

while jayde was in town, the three of us boarded a stunt boat that twisted, turned and spun as all aboard screamed, laughed and – to paraphrase geri – got absolutely soaking wet. it was 45mins of pure fun.

but once is never enough so we found a way to take to the harbour again: a learn to sail class. i think when we booked, we were imagining lounging on a deck, sipping champagne while staring at the harbour. i can assure you, it was not.

learning to sail means training to be crew – we tied knots, upped the sails, steered the boat, ducked s the boom swung over our heads and grasped nervously to the sides as the boat tilted so much it made the jet boat experience look tame. it was three hours of work, three hours of fun and three hours of understanding why the harbour is the heart of the city.  

compassion in the city

potts point and surrounds are truly gorgeous parts of sydney that are home to some of the city’s, and indeed the country’s, richest people. but nestled behind potts point’s trendy cafes is the wayside chapel – a homeless shelter that helps 200 people a day.

the wayside has just published an amazing book called stories from the wayside where four top fashion photographers took shots of wayside visitors to show the humanity that unites us all. as part of the book’s promotion, timeout sydney published a fascinating interview with the wayside’s reverend graham long. if you’re interested, it’s well worth the read (i couldn’t find the interview on their site unfortunately, only in hard copy) but i’ve reproduced the last paragraph for you which put a smile on my face.

reverend graham long: ‘look, i think sydney is mostly a place of enormous compassion. our governor (marie bashir) is an extraordinary person. she phoned me one day to say “graham, i’ve got clothes for your op shop, would you like them?” i said. “that’d be great.” next thing you know the governor’s car is down the road and a man hands me a bundle of clothes. i put it into the op shop, and within an hour i saw a bag lady walking up the street wearing the governor’s clothes. new tell me, when has that happened in the history of nsw?’ 

heading south

‘melbourne or sydney... melbourne or sydney,’ was the focus of our where-to-live-in-oz debate.

like many visitors to australia, piero had been wowed by sydney’s gorgeous harbour, enviable weather and world-class city beaches. like many brisbanites (and countless others who grow up in a city which is not their country’s biggest), i’ve always been weary of sydney’s brashness but loved melbourne’s more subtle charms of style, reserve and understatement.

in the end, we reasoned that as brilliant as melbourne was, its  offerings were similar but on a smaller scale to what we-had-and-were-leaving-behind in london. sydney, however has one trump card that london (god bless it) and melbourne just don’t have: fantastic weather. after seven years of random weather, we wanted sunshine.

fortunately, choosing to live in one of our preferred cities hasn’t ended our love affair with the other, especially when it’s only a one hour flight away. last weekend we took advantage of the short distance and flew south to melbourne to stay with our friend jayde.

the weekend reminded me of exactly why i love melbourne. the funky cafes burst with character while serving up first-class food, the people appear to be effortlessly cool and stylish, and the city itself is picturesque while being small enough to saunter around in a half-day. i found myself wondering, should we have chosen melbourne? 

and then it rained. and then it was cold. and then it rained again. and i remembered exactly why i was so happy to be in sydney . 

some of the great places we visited that get the patata-seal-of-approval are:

• madame sousou cafe for a fabulously parisian brunch 
• shou sumiyaki sake bar and grill for a cook-it-at-your-table japanese bbq
• de clieu cafe for the most amazing bacon and eggs i've ever had
• charcoal lane - a high-quality, aboriginal-themed mission australia restaurant that is all about enabling aboriginal and disadvantaged young people to gain work experience