Day 3 - 9th January 2009

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - when I get back from Sydney I'm going to need a holiday from my holiday. Sydney's just got this buzz that you can't avoid getting caught up in.

In light of the fact that I'm staying up late writing these, I'm posing this (and the 10th's) article a day late.

Today was intended to be a leisurely day of wandering up and down King street in Newtown, and to be fair it did start out that way.

At breakfast, I was introduced to a new type of food - shredded wheat in warm milk with vanilla protein for flavour. It's very good for you, but not exactly to my tase (possibly because it IS good for you). However I do want to thank Shoba for introducing it to me because I've never had shredded wheat before. I also want to take the time to thank Shoba (if she reads this) for letting me use her bedroom whilst she slept on the couch.

We left Shoba's apartment at 10am and took her car to the Royal Price Alfred hospital where she works in the elderly persons department. From there it was a short walk to King street. I'm not too sure how to describe King street because if we have something similar in Adelaide I would have known about it. It's a cross between the Parade and O'Connell street. It's got some trendy shops and lots of little cafes but it's got a bit of a Hindley street mixed in. Shoba and I had a really nice drink at a cafe called "Citrus". She had a coffee and I had a fruit frappe (which is fruit and ice all crushed up) in a HUGE glass so it was worth the money spent on it.

Anyway, the major point for me on King street was that there were at least four second-hand bookstores that we could go to.I feel a bit sorry for Shoba because I dragged her through the bookshops after me - but she was very nice about it.

There was one bookstore that I would have investigated further if we'd had time. It had wall-to-ceiling bookcases, and after looking through three cases, the sci-fi/fantasy area had only reached the "authors beginning with L" section. As it takes so long to get to Newtown I think I'll have to put off further investigation until next time. You've got to leave something to do, right? :P

I'd rather stupidly chosen to look in one last bookstore before lunch. As a consequence we were running late and since Shoba had to get to work at 1pm, lunch was out of the question. Luckily Shoba knew an organic store that sold sandwitches and wraps, and after a quick detour and falafel wrap later, we were back on track. We went back to the car and Shoba offered to drop me at Newtown station.

The side of the street we went down was clear, but we could see that in the incoming lane, the cars were bumper to bumper. I pitied the poor drivers stck in the traffic, especially once we missed the station and joined them. I could mark our progress by a woman walking a small terrier - she passed us three times before we got out of the traffic.

I decided to sit back and enjoy the experience that was a cornerstone of daily life in Sydney, and amused myself by looking for interesting shop names. One that stuck with me was "Noddy Hairdresses. Hairdressing for humans". Does this imply that other hairdressers don't cater for humans? Or that Noddy's won't accept sheep?

Newtown station is interesting in that it isn't modernised at all. The train times are shown on painted clocks with moveable hands, and the destinations are listed on triangular prisms (similar to those on billboards) that can be rotated to reveal the appropriate station. I think that I expected it to be more in keeping with the central stations in the city, only because the area seemed very modern. However I've been told that Newtown used to be a bit of a dump, and that it's only now coming into it's own.

After changing trains at Central, I arrived back in time for Michelle to pick me up from Chatswood. By this time it was late afternoon, and I'd been buzzed out by my adventure - so I didn't go out to dinner with Michelle and her mother. I think it was a good decision though, as I probably wouldn't have been able to get up the next morning if I had gone.

Tomorrow is Saturday which I intend to spend with Justin in the city, so more buzzing is on the horizon.