Chelsea’s RTW Travel Log

We went car shopping yesterday and it was highly educational. First off, we learned that we definitely don’t want to dump $5000 into a campervan. And that tires or here ‘tyres’ are retreaded and can easily bust. A couple from Belgium that had been traveling around the East Coast of Australia for nearly 7 months explained all kinds of stuff to us about buying a vehicle. Their campervan was nice, but we weren’t into using our own indoor toliet or the whole campervan lifestyle. We both agreed that if we’re going to camp, we should buy a tent and a station wagon. If we need to stay inside, we will thow a foam mattress down on the inside of the vehicle. It turns out, there are rest area type stops every 20 miles in Australia, so there’s always access to water. You just need a filter… I don’t know how I feel about that.

We went to the car market in Kings Cross yesterday. I might have told some of you about it, but it’s in a parking lot on the second floor. I saw a cool video about it at one point… so, we went for a gander. There were only 10 vehicles or so there, but we met a couple of dudes from Canada that had a cheap station wagon for $2200. They seemed genuine and the car is nice, so we might go back to look again, but we’re still learning about what we want. All the people that we spoke to have been in Australia for 5 months or more. The reason there weren’t very many vehicles is because it’s Winter here. Funny, feels more like Spring to me.

Here’s a picture of the elevator to the garage where the Kings Cross Car Market operates.

So, I’ve been trying to figure out the local culture here in Sydney. It’s interesting… our neighborhood is a trendy, gay-friendly part of town. There’s a liquor store, called Lick-Her Shop. It’s pretty funny. There’s also a place on the same block named “Thai Me Up.” Haha, I love it.

We found a cheap Indian place yesterday, and you all know how much I love Indian food. Most food here is $12 per entree and up and that’s just for a hamburger and fries. You really have to look around to find decent prices on food. The Indian joint has small, medium and large curry plates with your choice of 1-3 curries for $5-8 a plate on 131 OXford St. We were into that.

Oh yea, and it’s not ‘take out food,’ all of the places advertise it as ‘take away’ food and some of them charge less for it. And, if a place says it’s ‘Fully Licensed’ that means there’s a full bar. And finally, there are places that are BYO, which is an acronym for Bring Your OWN!  Haha… You can bring your own beer and wine into many cafes and restaurants. Some of them charge you a little extra for it, but there are plenty of them that don’t. If you’re in the real touristy areas, you can’t find BYO’s.

Other than cheap Indian, we’ve just been grocery shopping and cooking our meals, especially breakfast. We had pac-man eggs today… Yum. Breanna orginally showed me how to make those. You cut the center out of a piece of bread with a cup circumference and then you butter it on both sides, throw it in a frying pan, and crack and egg into the center, cooking it just long enought that the yolk is still runny.

Speaking of food, we had sparkling wine and cheese for dinner last night.

Here’s a picture of our wine glasses overlooking the city from our place.