I would write about the mile walk to pick up the rental car (well it seemed like a mile with 8 pieces of luggage which at this point were unbearable heavy), providing humor to the Australians when our Smarte Cart derailed sending large duffels flying in front of the cafe, getting lost whilst leaving the airport, Larry driving on the left side of the road in our Hyundai i3 loaded down with unbearably heavy luggage and our first meeting with our landlord, Matt Smith, but I had such a horrible, throbbing sinus headache that I might like to forget those two hour of my life (the plane air dried me out badly).
Our Leederville townhouse was smashing! Tidy, clean and bright. After the sudafed and aleve kicked in, we freshened up (showering never felt so good) and headed out to get some groceries and explore the suburb of Mt. Hawthorn. Just a few blocks from our pad, we probably could walk it if is wasn't freezing here - oh yes...I forgot to mention that it is still the dead of winter here. We have literally gone from 98 degree weather to 19 degree highs - you can do the fahrenheit to celsius conversion.
Driving was the biggest challenge of the day. It was my first time ever driving on the left side of the road. The biggest challenge is that you have a large amount of automobile on the left side that is not normally there from a spacial sense. Driving passed parked cars and actually keeping in your lane are quite hard at first as one tends to drift the left in order to avoid the anticipated head on collision that seems eminent when another car is coming at you. When I drove into Mt. Hawthorn I was most thankful for left turns and traffic lights so I didn’t have to think about the direction of oncoming traffic.
We arrived at The Mezz, a practical shopping center, about 40 minutes before everything closed. The trading hours as they call the shop hours here in Perth are not as accommodating as those in the US. When we arrived at the butcher counter, the clerks were taking the tickets off all the trays of meat. I managed to get my hands on two rosemary and mint lamb chops. Woolworth's (or Woolies as they affectionately call it), the grocery store, closed at 5. We were only half way through the store when the clerk came over the loud speaker announcing the closing. My question is what do people who work do? Not eat? At least the pharmacy was open until 5:30 so we had time to grab tissues (2 options) and toothpaste (Colgate or Aim) and a bath puff ($6AUD). You might think that having this few options would be quite limiting. I find it liberating. No longer will I stand in front of the toothpaste in the aisle at the store for 10 minutes debating whether I want fresh mint or cool mint, tartar control or extra whitening. I like Colgate and that’s what we got.
The bottle shop was a different story. That was open until 7. Light bulb! That must be what people who work do - liquid dinner! There were also lots of options here with very few (less than 5) brands of wine I have seen before. It was a crap shoot, but we picked a Margaret River shiraz (pronounced sheer-AHZ) that turned our to be great.
Matt and Claire Smith, our landlords, left us a gorgeous loaf of bread from New Norcia bakery which is in Mt. Hawthorn. We ran in there for some bread to have with dinner.
So on our first day we managed to land, rent a car, find our house, the grocery store, pharmacy, package store and bakery. We ended up with a fabulous meal followed by some very deep sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment