A night at the pie shop

So Australians LOVE pie. And by pie, I mean a typical English-type pie, that's about the size of your hand and usually with meat and gravy type filling. They are considered a portable food, so just like we have Subways or Chick-Fil-A as common fast food restaurants, Australia also has pie shops for grabbing a pie for lunch and dinner. 

One of the iconic Sydney pie shops is called Harry's Cafe de Wheels. It's technically a caravan that's been converted to a pie cafe, but now it's permanently located near our new apartment in Woollomooloo. It's been around for a long time - it started parking near the Finger Wharf in the 1930s when there was a lot of activity in the naval yards, and it's been in business there ever since. 

Lots of famous or famous-ish people have stopped by the pie shop over the years. All the momentous occasions are documented in pictures and hung up on the outside of the caravan. 

We even found a picture of Colonel Sanders!

Lucky for us (or for T, really, since I don't care for pie), Harry's serves a vegetarian version of their pie. So we decided we'd be real Aussies for a night and grab pies for dinner after work. 

Most pie shops give you the option to have your pie with mushy peas and gravy. I am also not a huge fan of the "mushy pea" concoction, since I think it's about as appetizing as it sounds. T has embraced the mushy pea notion, though, so he got his pie properly covered. 

We got our pies for takeaway, and ate them on the wharf. 

After dinner, we took a walk out to the end of Finger Wharf, just to enjoy the sunset. 

We passed this guy on a bike, with his dog on a leash. Hard to tell who was walking who!

Happily filled up on pie, T decided to take a fun picture with me. I voted no for him growing a mustache. 

The Sydney Flower Markets

My lovely friend Esther has had a bee in her bonnet for a while about going to see the Sydney Flower Markets. I've read a couple articles about them too, but given that you have to get there around 5 AM, I assumed that I would never find someone to go with me. But lucky for me, Esther got interested in going, promised me that she would wake up at 4:30, and so we set out last Saturday to go on a flower market adventure!

Leaving the house at 4:15 by myself in the dark felt weird, but once I got to the car I'd booked, driving through the city has never been easier! =) 

The Flower Markets are out in a suburb on the western side of Sydney. At 5 in the morning, it just took us 20 minutes to get there from the center of the city. 

The markets are primarily a wholesaler for a florists and the like, but they do allow the general public. However, the whole setup is clearly designed for people know know what they're doing (not us!) so there's not a ton of signage in the parking areas. We focused on avoiding the delivery trucks and forklifts, and got through the parking lot as fast as we could!

We didn't end up quite in the right place, so we stumbled onto the Produce Market. The amount of people rushing around was really intimidating. However, luck was with us, because not only did we find a little cafe serving coffee, the nice lady there also told how to get out of that chaos and over to the building where the flowers were!

The flower market building was still full-on, but much smaller and less frantic than the produce markets. 

It was a warehouse full of different growers and sellers. Lots of the sellers had a wide variety of flowers, but some focused on just native flowers, or orchids, or roses, or just greenery. 

Interestingly, there were a few parties there who were buying flowers for their events. We saw bridal parties and some other groups who were out for specific things. 

One of the orchid-specific shops

We were just there to browse, though, so we took our time and checked out all the sellers. The sellers seemed to pretty much be focused on dealing with their regular customers, and it wasn't always clear who "owned" one of the patches of flowers. But we figured out that if we picked up some flowers and held some cash in our hand, someone would appear to take it from us!

Of course, one of the big appeals of going the to the market is the price. It was pretty interesting to see the markup that happens in just one step of the delivery chain. The flowers were significantly cheaper than I can buy them from a stall in the train station or at the Saturday markets. But of course, I'm paying for someone to get up at 4:30 on a Saturday to get them to the market, which is a cost I'm happy to pay for! =)

One of the other cool things about the market was seeing the amazing flowers that are a bit rarer, ones I've never seen in shops around the city. This one was one of my favorites: the buds were so geometrically square, it was incredible. 

And some of the flowers were amazing just because of their size - like this one, which was the size of Esther's head. $15 for a flower the size of your head! What a deal, if you have a vase that can hold it and a saw to cut it! 

 

The people that were there in earnest knew the system. They would come with their carts, pick up the flowers they wanted, and then lay them out on a table, grouped by price. Then the seller would magically appear and calculate up the cost. It was quite a system. 

It's a bit hard to describe the overall atmosphere that made the flower markets so fun. It's pretty incredible to just be standing surrounded by all these amazing flowers, many of which I've never seen before or only ever seen in Australia. The industry that make the wheels of the florist business turn is fascinating to see first-hand. 

And needless to say, we did buy a few flowers! There were so many cool flowers, we had to constantly remind ourselves of the number of vases we had at home (not many!) and try to keep it under control. 

OK, so maybe we ended up with a *few* more than we had vases for! That just meant we had to get creative! =)

Maybe next time we'll get brave and do the produce market!

Sunday hiking

Last weekend we had a beautiful Saturday! We had planned to meet up with a friend from work to hike to Manly if the weather stayed nice, so we were on!

Starting out, we walk by all the lovely homes tucked into the hills of the North Shore. 

Here we are starting out. Our friend has a little one, and she got to ride almost the whole way. Even though she wasn't hiking along with us, she did talk and sing to us for the entire four hours, minus a small nap in the middle. It made for an entertaining, if not a quiet walk!

I kept an eye out on the boats camped out along the shore. I've decided that when we make our fortunes here that I will look really good in one of these little boats. AND that way I can hang out on the water all weekend while T can do his inside things, but just on the water with me. Seems perfect! =)

Lots of beautiful blue water, even this far back in the harbor...

A prime cove for camping out once I get my boat.

I found my boat! It's the little white one with the wood panels. I think it will suit us very well and we'll look very cute in there. 

Aside from boats, there's always lots of beautiful wildlife to enjoy on the walk...

It was getting a bit windy once we got close to Manly. The waves were picking up, so no one was in the oceanside baths at Fairlight. 

And then we were in Manly! A welcome sight for us, because we also grabbed some lunch with our friends before we caught the ferry back to our side of the harbor.

Always a lovely walk to do!

My new commute

Since we've moved, I walk to work basically every day. Our new apartment is about a 15 minute walk from the train station, and to get to the station, it's an uphill walk. So since I have to walk either way, I just walk the extra 15 minutes to skip the train entirely. 

There's a tiny little park with a nice view of the city where I start out my walk. 

Potts Point was developed quite early in Sydney's history as a city, so there are some beautiful old buildings and lots of cute styles. Potts Point was one of the "gentrified" areas when Sydney was being built up, and it shows with the types of buildings here. 

Lucky for me, I get to walk by the dog park too: one of the best parts of my morning! The dogs go nuts, and I often pass dogs not on a leash that are running ahead of their human to the park to play with their friends. 

My commute takes me on McElhone Stairs, which is the longest staircase in Sydney. 112 steps! Luckily, on my way to work I go down them, otherwise the prospect of climbing all the stairs AND going to work would be too much to overcome. Every morning there are crazy people running the steps. 

Next I come to the Finger Wharf area in Woolloomooloo. The Finger Wharf is the longest timber-piled wharf in the world, as I learned when I looked it up to write this post. I'm not exactly sure what timber-piled means, but the wharf is really, really long. It was originally built for exporting wool, but now it's been refurbished inside with a really nice hotel and fancy apartments. We went to an apartment inspection a year or so ago, just to see inside, and we timed how long it took us to walk out of the building: it was seven minutes just to leave! So the wharf is really long, but it's also a beautiful structure. 

In the war, the wharf was also used for naval activities because it's right beside the navy base. But now it's just a neighbor to the ships. 

Lots of beautiful sculptures along the wharf...

Then I skirt pass Woolloomooloo, before I head up the hill to the Domain. 

Once I climb the steps up, the CBD is in sight again. 

The Art Gallery of NSW is a lovely building. Lots of cockatoos hang out here in the mornings, and they are NOT quiet. So it's a lively part of the walk. 

Then I cut through the Domain. The Domain connects Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens, which makes a huge green swath alongside the CBD. At the end of the Domain, I come to the Sydney Hospital, which is the oldest hospital in Australia. When it was built in the early 1800s, the governor of Sydney at the time said that the contractors who did the work could have convict labor and a monopoly on importing rum, which was supposedly enough to recoup their costs. Even though the hospital didn't start out so auspiciously, it's really a lovely building these days, and still operates as a hospital. 

It's all downhill after the hospital! Just a quick walk down the length of Martin Place...

After the hostage crisis at Martin Place, the city took pictures of all the flowers left in honor of the victims and put them alongside the railings at the train station entrance. I believe they are planning a longer term memorial, but in the meantime, it's a nice tribute to the victims and the people that were so terribly affected by that day. 

Then I pass the fountain at the end of Martin Place, which I've learned since living here is famous for having been in The Matrix movie. 

And then I'm at work! 

As a bonus, sometimes I get to see the dogs coming in to work for the day. Rufus rides in a cart when he comes into the office. 

It's a lovely walk to work every day!