One of the great things about our digs in Balmain East, besides the view of the harbour, is the ease in which we can get around with public transport. Though we have a car, it is the best way to get around Sydney, it’s cheap and you don’t have to worry about which way you should go around a round-about or finding a parking spot. We are a short 4-minute walk to the ferry and a 2-minute walk to a bus stop.

After a leisurely breakfast, we decided to go to the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) , the heart of the shopping district. We check Trip View, a great app, caught the 442 two blocks from the house and arrived at the QVB in less that 20 minutes.

We window shopped for a couple of hours, then had lunch. We shopped some more. Guy got some kitchen toys and Pauline came across a shirt she particularly fancied at Sportscraft. Unfortunately, it was a size 14 and it floated on her like a tent. The store did not have any other sizes, but the clerk checked the inventory of her sister stores and found that David Jones had 4 size 12s in stock. She then pointed us in the right direction, and we headed off.  David Jones turned out to be a massive store, women’s clothes were on floors 2,3,4 & maybe 5. We got off on the second floor and asked the first clerk we saw where we could find the shirt. After describing the shirt as best we could, she brought us up to the 4th floor dropped us off at with another clerk and went off searching elsewhere and came back with two nice shirts that she thought Pauline might like. Meanwhile the second clerk went to the stock room and brought out a size 12 of the one we were looking for, however it was still too big! David Jones sublets the space to different retailers, the first clerk worked for a different retailer that the one she brought us to and where Pauline did finally buy a shirt. Talk about service!