My new home

This is Brisbane, my new home. The green arrow is the University of Queensland, where I'll be working. As you can see the river sorta winds through everything. And there are few bridges. The really cool area to live is New Farm (aka. the Valley, Fortitude Valley, Teneriffe) in the upper right peninsula. It's all renovated warehouses and men in tight, yet saggy, pants. It's also 45 minutes on two buses from UQ or 60 minutes on the ferry.

So I'm looking for a place in the West End. On the knob between the Brisbane CBD and UQ. West End has about 3 blocks of shops. A few cafes, a few pubs, a few restaurants, a library. Basically a nice little neighborhood. Unfortunately, apparently a lot of other people want to live in the West End as well. So most of the apartments I can find are between the West End and South Bank.

South Bank was redeveloped 20 years ago. It was really well done, a beautiful park with an arbour running the distance, pool, cafes and restaurants, and a pool. It has withstood the test of time, I thought it had just recently been redeveloped. The problem is threefold. 1. There's nothing, save the train station, that wasn't built 20 years ago. All of the the cafes, restaurants and shops are part of these giant multipurpose buildings that all look modern. 2. Most of the shops and restaurants are chains. 3. It's just sorta dead except for weekend mornings. So Saturday and Sunday mornings it's a great place to live, otherwise, bleh. Oh, and most of the apartments around there are really recently built. So they're nice and new, but just, sort of, generic.

I have several weeks to find something, so I've looked at a couple of these style units. Even put in an application today on one cause it was really close to the West End and more affordable than most. But am still looking for something that offers a bit more.

PS. I'm now cycling from Adelaide to Melbourne starting on the 26th along the Great Ocean Road. So excited. How many pairs of cycling shorts do you think one should take on an 8 day cycle tour?