Umina Beach

Some pictures to get an idea of our new town. There is a great beach we go to about every other day. Dogs can be off the leash so that is great for Lyra, she loves it.Also there is a great playground close by the beach (close by another part of the beach where they don't allow dogs). The downtown area has lots of stores: 3 supermarkets, a view bakeries, cafes, bookstore, a butcher, post office, library, pharmacies and lots of other small stores. Really more like a Dutch downtown area than an American one. In other ways things feel more similar to the US here.

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Our house and car

Steve found a rental house for us in Umina Beach (about an hr from Sydney at the Central Coast), it is a 'pole home' and is built against a hill so that means we have to walk up a lot of stairs to get to it but the view is beautiful (we can see the Pacific Ocean from our place). Also the beach (a beautiful beach) is only 5 min drive (or half an hr walk) away. Here pictures of our house and the neighborhood. We have some really nice birds around, lots of kookaburras (who wake us up in the morning) and bush turkeys, and lots others like rainbow parakeets. The birds here are amazing! The car is not that amazing.. old car (Toyota Rav4) but ok.. it is manual unfortunately.. (having to learn to drive left in a manual where I don't know my way around is quite challenging).

Sydney Opera House and Botanical Gardens

Sunday we took the train to Circular Quay in Sydney and walked to the Opera House and the Botanic Gardens. It is so beautiful there! Also we took the ferry to Taronga zoo (but did not visit the zoo, just wanted to go on the ferry this time). They have this great deal here on Sundays were you can travel by public transportation (trains, busses, ferries) for just 2.50 dollar for the whole day. So we will definitely make use of that again in the future. The trains are nice, we had a beautiful view from the train, and it takes about an hour and half to get to downtown Sydney, so perfect for a day trip.

Fish & Chips in Woy Woy and Australian Reptile Park

Internet seems to be a little faster somehow, so I uploaded some pictures from last weekend- we went to Woy Woy to eat fish and chips and then to the Australian Reptile Park (half hr drive from our house). Because it is spring, they have all kinds of baby animals: baby wombats, baby koalas, baby tasmanian devils. All very cute. Also we could pet the kangaroos and the boys got to have their picture taken with a python! We also learned a lot about milking spiders and snakes to produce antivenom. Very interesting. We had a great day!

Australia!!

And we are in Australia! We live nice house with a beautiful view (but lots of stairs to get to it) in Umina Beach.. about half an hr walk from a great beach. It is about an hr by train from Sydney. Unfortunately our internet connection is not so great and uploading pictures to this blog takes forever.. so here is one for now. We are working on getting internet working better so hopefully more pictures soon.