Febrary 21, 2015

I thought you might enjoy a glimpse of what real estate prices are like in Australia. Everything here is crazy expensive, but real estate is really crazy expensive! This little house is one that the church has owned for about 30 years, it's right across the street from the service center/temple property. It's location is nothing spectacular, it's just a little old house on a side street in an older neighborhood/suburb. Take a look and see what you think this house would be worth to you. The church just sold it a couple of weeks ago, they used it to house missionaries for years and then decided to sell it.

Check it out, it's about 40 years old, has no yard to speak of except for the little patch of grass bordering the street, no view, etc.  If you guessed it sold for $1.4 million dollars, you are right! Crazy...

I don't know why I'm including this picture, but I thought it was interesting. This is a mushroom I found growing in the grass next to the sidewalk on the service center property. The grass was pretty short, it gets mowed once a week, so this mushroom had to have grown pretty fast! I've never seen a yellow mushroom before.

My little camera doesn't do justice to the bright yellow color of the underside of this thing. 

Friday afternoon we left the office a little early to go downtown to the Apple store because Dave's iPad wasn't working properly. When we came out of the store we saw a poster advertising a luminaria display of the Terra Cotta Warriors of China. If you are not sure what the Terra Cotta Warriors are read here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsUE-ZtcUFg  Wednesday was Chinese New Years, and since there's such a huge population of Chinese people in Sydney, it has been a big deal. The luminaria display was just part of the festivities downtown that we just kind of stumbled on. We decided to walk around downtown and visit the most prominent displays. One thing you have to love about big cities is that there's always something going on!  

If we had stayed until dark, these all have lights in them so they glow in the dark. We saw pictures and it really looked cool, but since we would have had to wait four hours until it was dark, we decided to move on.

We just kind of stumbled on this couple taking wedding photos, so I got a photo too!

We found a little park area (Lavender Bay) that we just loved. Apparently, Brett Whitely, one of Australia's well-known painters lived in this area and after he died a few years ago his wife landscaped the area below their house. It was public land that the city just let grow wild, but she decided to landscape it and turn it into something beautiful using her own money. I must say, she did a wonderful job.

She made little eating areas throughout the area

We found a great little Indian restaurant at the top of the hill!

Down on the wharf