Our new Mercedes!

Another beautiful day in Sydney... We awoke with the neighbors (with open windows, once they are up, we're up - but that's fine - I'll be up at 6:00am starting Monday so all's fair) and embarked on our odyssey. Let me just say that Sydney is an incredibly beautiful and picturesque city set hard against sea and hills; unless you are driving and need to get somewhere. It seems invariable that the street you MUST turn onto is labeled with a 'No Right Turn' (or left turn, or it's a one way coming at you, but just for that block). You then take a right on the next block, hoping to go around, but after three right turns you emerge into a parallel universe - the street has a different name (even if it was the one you were looking for - which is unlikely), winds over the hill, and of course leaves the city map that you have. The phone GPS refuses to re-calculate the route (or show you where you are). Directions are useless, as they presume an intimate familiarity with the entire metro area - 'ya know the Caltrex station on Grand North? well turn there, come up the lowside of Columbo after a left on Queen and come around again to avoid the divider on Palmatta and you're there' (since we already tried to cross that divider once and caught the underside of the car, and made an illegal U turn in another attempt). And yet somehow, mainly because you are bordered by water on one side, you bumble your way to a recognizable street. We bought extra bread at the store to leave a trail next time...

From a social science standpoint, it's interesting how used car dealers have evolved to a remarkably similar physical state though in radically different cultural environments...evolution, though not necessarily survival of the fittest. Short of dental procedures, there's few things less pleasurable than buying a used car. Through careful research on the web, and visits to 'Hatchback World' (literally) and other fine providers of used vehicles we did purchase a Mercedez-Benz today - which is likely to be the only one we'll ever purchase. It's 11 years old (77 years old in dog years) with 100k kilometers on it and would easily fit inside the back of our Toyota Sienna at home, so it will be easy to park. We do have room for an extra coin inside which we will use to flip to decide whether the groceries or one of the girls rides on top home from the store. I think we got a reasonable deal - unless the steering wheel falls off tomorrow. But it is a nice color - and seriously, it's exactly what we need for the next few months.

We had to purchase it with $50 bills as I couldn't get a money order without a passport - seemed fitting though somehow to be making a deal with a huge envelope of $50s. Anyway, we have wheels and an apartment. We grilled hamburgers on the back step tonight (meat from the butcher 2 doors down, which was cool, but $19.99 per kilo for the cheapest ground beef, which was not so cool).  In the picture, our apartment is the top right. Took our first walk on Bondi beach today, beautiful evening, tons of surfers and Kate was captivated by the skateboard park and a fearless 10 year old (or so) girl doing tricks... Tomorrow the big excitement is lease contracts, car insurance, and an electronic toll tag for the car - and on top of that excitement we may go see the Harry Potter exhibition! So it should be a great day!