A Sydney Harbour Walk - Double Bay to Rose Bay

Since moving to our home in North Sydney, I've run/walked Balls Head Reserve many-oh-many a-time.

While it shames me to say it, I think I might even be getting bored of it!

So I decided first thing in the morning that I would change things up and try one of the many walks listed in this book:

Since it's on the train line, I decided to do this one: Double Bay to Rose Bay.

The pictures in the book were a little misleading, though the text was true to its word.

There are some beautiful views starting off at the small neighbourhood park, Steyne Park.

However, there beach right off Steyne Park doesn't connect to Double Bay, so you have to go back to the busy streets to get there.

You go through the Redleaf Pool area which is a public swimming part of the bay netted off from the rest of the bay with a jetty.

You go down some steps....

And there it is! You can walk along the jetty and enjoy some sun and breeze.

Then, it's back to the residential roads and lanes, which are quite disappointing because they are full of traffic, noise and smog on a Tuesday morning.

Finally, I made it to Rose Bay:

And was rewarded with this sweet little beach:

There was a Stand-Up Paddleboarding class going on and some kayakers enjoying the day.

I took these stairs out of the park and started to climb a little residential hill before I realized that I was missing a whole chunk of the walk!

You can sort of see it beyond the house in the foreground. There's a long section of the walk that goes beside the main street all around Rose Bay.

Whoops.

Anyway, a 2 hr walk was enough for me, especially since I had a date with some Mexican.

Perfect way to end a long walk!

I would only rate this walk a 4/10 since it takes you down too many main streets with very little time in comparison by the harbour (then again, I did miss a chunk of it).

I had downloaded and listened to 2 Radiolab podcasts: Bliss and Inheritance. Both were extremely excellent and engaging. I can't wait to download more for my walk next week!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Highlights of the weekend: 13 Rooms!

This weekend, I heard that a cool art exhibition was going on at the wharves, so after my Saturday morning yoga class, I had Steven meet me there.

13 Rooms is a free public art exhibit, part of an art series that has been to Sydney in previous years.

The line-up was discouraging but it actually moved really quickly.

Twenty minutes later, we were in.

My favourite exhibition happened right at the start.

A greeter handed us some pamphlets and said, "Scientists study spread of new China bird flu." (or something to that general direction.)

It turns out this was a "piece of art" aiming to incite interesting social interactions from a piece of "current" news. This "piece of art" came from 2003 and was entitled "News".

I had a HOOT watching people ignore the poor girl (literally, I think I hooted several times). I think very few people realized that SHE one of the pieces of art work happening there!

Most of the art was moving, interactive, and human-based. There were line-ups to plenty of the popular exhibits like "Swap" where the artist sits in a chair at a table asking people to swap stuff (often rubbish...seriously, one girl swapped a piece of plastic wrap that once housed a cheese sandwich) for other stuff.

I swapped my hand sanitizer for a magazine!

But my hands-down favourite was Revolving Doors:

The dancers in grey formed the arms of the revolving door and walked around while people walked inside the spaces with them. Often, they would try to smoosh you, which is what's happening here to those people in the corner.

I think I spent 20 minutes in here alone just running around like a kid.

My other favourites were these two:

We left the exhibit in high spirits, feeling all artsy fartsy for free!

I had a really great time, and would have loved to go back to play with more revolving doors, but the exhibit closed that evening.

Definitely, public art FTW!

Day 2 in New Zealand: Fox Glacier Township

This is the second installment to Steven and my adventures in New Zealand! If you missed the first, you can find it here. Cheers!

When Steven and I had planned our road trip to New Zealand, we were prepared for hours of driving a day. It would be worth the effort to have all the adventure we were planning on having.

Our first adventure would be hiking around Fox Glacier, the most accessible of New Zealand's 3000-some glaciers. This was supposed to be an easy drive: 5 hours from Christchurch to Fox Glacier Township through Arthur's Pass.

The drive was actually more like an agonizing 6 hrs plus. I was considering murdering Steven and dumping his corpse in the mountains.

Just kidding... Maybe.

We took a rest-and-stretch stop at a random lake about an hour or so out of Christchurch. Up in the mountains it was significantly chillier than the sunshine led you to believe.

We also stopped at Arthur's Pass for some gas and grub. I got 2 oranges for $3 NZD! Outrageous but I thought the vitamins would do well to heal my cold.

Some unique warnings...

Then, there was that magic moment when, after driving for hours through mountains and farms, you hit the coast and endless horizon:

By the time we got to Fox Glacier Township, the sun had just set. We were both really afraid of driving in the dark, so we were racing the sun to get there.

We had a quick dinner (btw, most delicious soup I've ever had; it was roasted tomato!), and went to bed.

The guy at our motel had told us to check out Lake Matheson, just 5 min down the road, before we went on our glacier hike at 8:30 AM. The sun was set to rise around 7:30, so we had a quick breakfast and made our way there.

So. Worth. It.

Steven and I signed up for a "Fox-Trot" half day hike around the glacier. You walk up the terminal face of the glacier and explore whatever area of it you can.

The company we went with, Fox Glacier Guiding, got us fully outfitted.

Boots, socks, wind/water proof jacket, waterproof backpacks, and crampons.

Crampons are sharp little pointy things that allow you to kick your enemies off glaciers and frolic with triumph. RAWR.

There was about a 20-30 minute walk from the car park to the glacier itself.

Those bits of white are the glacier there, covered in rock and silt.

Once you got on the glacier, it was incredible to think that it extended back another 30 miles up into the mountains.

It was really dirty up there.

"Glaciers are like conveyor belts for mountain rocks," our guides explained. "They carry them from the mountain tops to the bottom as they melt."

I just thought Foxie needed a good ol' shower and scrub. That dirty ol' glacier girl.

That's right.

"Sandy DOMINATED the mighty Fox Glacier."

One of our Heart Challenges is to dominate everything I do. What can I say. It comes naturally.

Give love: Boston Marathon and Why I Run

I read a lot of running blogs.

Sometimes I even pretend this blog is a running blog (...is it? I still can't tell.).

So, waking up to news about the Boston Marathon was heart-breaking. I emailed my sister to make sure our friend in Boston was safe. He had been cheering at the finish line and thankfully left 2:30 into the race. I am so, so, so grateful that he is safe.

Then, I get this message:

In my anger and disgust, I said some very non-yogi non-ahimsa things in our chat ("ahimsa" means non-harming, so not + "non-harming"= harming. Very, very harming). It was probably good that I wasn't on that train, because I doubt I would have held my tongue.

Luckily, Facebook was there to buoy me.

My hat off to you, random stranger on Facebook who is extremely eloquent and smart!

There's no point in being angry at some random stranger my boyfriend overheard on his way to work. In the words of the Facebook quote above, "The good outnumber you, you insensitive idiot on the train, and we always will."

The fact that this tragedy took place at a marathon hits so close to home. No, I've never run one--heck I've only run one race! Yet I still count myself as a runner, and one of those "white blood cells" that would flock to help. I am proud to be a runner.

"Running hard only because I'm being chased is not good enough. I need to run hard because I can, because I should. Not all the time, of course, but often enough that I don't forget what it feels like to burn. I can apply the same concept intellectually, spiritually, emotionally...where ordinary times of life are the workroom, the classroom, the track. We need to practice our work here. We need to study, learn, run the drills over and over again so that when the moment of crisis comes (and it always does), we do what needs to be done automatically. In the moment of crisis it's too late to train."

 -from Kristin Armstrong's Mile Markers: The 26.2 Most Important Reason Why Women Run

Anyway, I'll leave you with this song by MC Yogi, lip-dubbed by the Queen Street Yoga community.

Shaking things up in Sydney

Since moving to Sydney last year, Steven and I have settled into a life of work, weekends, work and work.

That's one of the reasons we took our New Zealand trip so suddenly. The routine of life can really make this Australian working holiday feel more like work than holiday. It's the reason we're trying to do something new each weekend.

Today, we started the day with a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

There were plenty of runners out, but the pollution from the traffic beside the pedestrian walkway was really too much. I wouldn't ever want to run the bridge mid-day, but I am thinking of taking an early morning run by the bridge.

Across the bridge, you walk into a suburb called The Rocks.

There was an open air market on today--food, clothes, souvenirs!

They built a temporary windmill here just for kicks.

They hold workshops, concerts, and demos here. Today they had a talk about how windmills do useful stuff like grind grain into wheat.

As we strolled around, I got this:

There was a fresh juicing stand and for some reason Steven let me "build" my own juice.

It was disgusting: apple, lemon, grapefruit, carrot, kale.

Still, I drank it all because it was healthy, and I didn't want to be sick again.

I also saw this:

The cone-shaped frostings were very interesting, but I didn't get any. I don't have much faith in Australian cupcake makers. No one can compare to my forever love: Prairie Girl Bakery in Toronto.

After we grabbed some lunch, Steven and I went to Sydney's Sea Life Aquarium and saw my new favourite animal: The Dugong!

He was chowing down on some delicious lettuce.

Steven thinks I like them because they eat the same meals I do:

But it's not true. Not the eating part...yes, I do eat a lot of lettuce, but the reason I like dugongs is because they're huge, gentle, cute and cuddly.

Steven wouldn't buy this for me because he says we should spend our money on silly things like vacations and food.

Great day in Sydney! What are you doing this weekend?

By the way, a new New Zealand post will be up soon! Stay tuned!

Day 1 in New Zealand: Christchurch

I'll be writing a series of posts about Steven and my New Zealand adventures. I'll write them as soon as I have the time and patience to upload all my photos. Hopefully, you'll have a weekly post about New Zealand to look forward subject yourself to!

The flight from Sydney to Christchurch was a rocky one. You go over a mountain range which lifts up some strong winds and makes your airplane feel like a toy dangling from a string.

I think I took 2 million ginger tablets just to land the plane without spewing.

Luckily, I felt quickly better once we got out of the airport and onto a bus. We were dropped off at our rental car office where we picked up a sturdy little Tiida.

Driving on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road was an absolute adventure! It took some getting used to, but I didn't kill anyone, so I call that success!

Wandering around Christchurch was eye-opening.

The earthquake of 2011 was widely reported in North American media, but I never really realized the extent of the damage. The city is basically gone.

Plenty of streets are fenced off.

The cathedral has basically been knocked down.

.

And another 400 remaining buildings and homes are meant to be demolished.

If this is 2 years after an earthquake, I can only imagine what the first year looked like.

Re:Start is the name of the container mall that is basically the only commercial site left in the city proper.

They literally took big shipping containers and put shops in them! Very clever, Christchurchians! My hat goes off to you.

We also saw this nifty thing outside the mall:

It's an old washing machine that someone has turned into a giant iphone/ipod docking station.

The "Dance-O-Mat" is connected to giant speakers over a portable dance floor. Did you notice that disco ball up top?

The next day, before we left Christchurch, we caught a family jamming. Of course, we joined them in our awkward Canadian shuffling way, but it was hugely fun!

Anyway, after wandering the city, we returned to our killer digs. We use Airbnb whenever we can because it's cheaper, friendlier, often a very unique experience, and sometimes, oh-so-luxurious!

This Airbnb is a 90-some year old farmhouse run by a really nice Kiwi couple.

It even had it's own little kitchen!

We had a quick dinner at a nearby pub (bad choice, pub food always seems to be made by someone who doesn't care what your dinner tastes like). The best part of the meal was the bread.

By 10 PM, we were fast asleep.

In the next installment, we get on the road for the first leg of our road trip. Stay tuned!

We're back!

Just a quick post now that Steven and I are back in Sydney.

Last week, we took a trip to the South Island of New Zealand. We road-tripped from Christchurch to Queenstown, kayaked in Milford Sound, and plenty of other cool stuff.

I'll have a New Zealand post up as soon as I get time!