Our new place is DOPE

After moving from neighborhood to neighborhood during our first week in Sydney -- so that I could get the flava of the place -- we settled on Kirribilli. Kirribilli is a Sydney neighborhood on the north shore of Sydney Harbour (officially, Port Jackson) right at the northern base of the "coat hanger" (Sydney Harbour Bridge).

Although Australians call Sydney's neighborhoods "suburbs," Kirribilli is definitely not suburban. We are right in the heart of a very dynamic central-city neighborhood. We are less than 100 meters from great stuff -- restaurants, cafes, pubs, etc. I've already got a new favorite pizza joint, Pizza Rio, which is run by a funny and friendly little Italian guy whom I enjoy joking around with.

It's also a short walk to the end of the peninsula, with in-your-face views of the iconic Sydney Opera House, downtown, and the harbor. To wit:

Despite the intervening water, we are very close to downtown. It is a short and amazingly picturesque walk or ride across the bridge. And we have a train station nearby. On Saturday, we confirmed that the train will get us into downtown in like 15 minutes when we visited the amazing Australian Museum. The trains will also take us pretty much everywhere else in greater Sydney, including the Blue Mountains.

Our place itself is in an historic brick building at 39 Fitzroy St. We are in #2, just like Jeter (don't hate). It is fully furnished, so we saved ourselves some money on buying more stuff. It's one bedroom and one bath, with a second bed-ish room that I am using for an office and where we will put up guests. (When ya coming?). The kitchen and living room are both really big, and we have a small outdoor terrace that is a great place for reading (or writing blogs).

This is the urban living I loved in Seattle and Portland. I will have to try hard not to let this great crib keep me from seeing everything else on the continent!