Alas... Time to Go Home

It is my last day in Australia. Yesterday I finally went to the Sydney Opera House and got to the see the two sides that I could never see from the ferry. We made a full circle around the building and quickly discovered that the white shell-like roofs that make the opera house so famous are also quite reflective. Trying to look right at them at noon was like trying to stare directly at the sun. So rather than trying too hard, I just pointed my camera and hoped for a good picture.

After our walkabout the opera house, we headed to The Rocks. This is the most historical part of Sydney where the settlers (aka criminals) set up camp upon their arrival to this most remote of prisons. Many of the homes have been beautifully restored and converted into store fronts. We spent some time in one that had been converted into an art gallery. After leaving the store we learned that the gentleman that lived there was a carpenter that specialized in making coffins... I guess someone has to do it.

After completing our last walkabout in Sydney we took the ferry back to Paul's flat and relaxed for a while before taking him and Melissa out for dinner. Since we're in Australia we thought we should really have a nice traditional meal for our last night... Japanese and Spanish Tapas.

We will be heading to the airport today at midday (a.k.a. noon) for our 2:45 flight at which time we will miraculously travel back in time to San Francisco where we are scheduled to arrive at 11:00 AM. Not a bad trick for our last day. All in all, my time in Sydney has been a blast and hopefully I will be able to make a return trip one of these days to check out all of the famous Australian sites I missed on this short vacation like Ayers Rock and the Great Barrier Reef. I'll be adding photos to all of these reports once I return home.

Thanks for reading!

The Queen's Birthday at the Zoo

We went to the Taronga Zoo yesterday along with every child in Sydney under the age of 5. Turns out that the zoo is a favorite spot to celebrate the Queen's Birthday in Sydney (a federal holiday in Australia... and if it wasn't for our desire not to pay taxes we could have it off in the states as well).

I've been to many zoos in my life but this is the first one with such a spectacular view. The zoo is up on a hill just across the harbor from Sydney giving the animals a lovely view of the opera house, the harbour bridge and they Sydney skyline. I guess if you have to be caged up all your life this is where you'd want to live out your days.

I was really only interested in seeing the animals that I somehow missed during my walkabouts in the bush. Our first stop was to peer at the koalas happily sleeping in their trees. For a mere $30 I could have a picture taken with one of the cute teddies, but instead I will superimpose me in later for free. We also spent sometime in the Australian outback with kangaroos (fortunately they were unaware or just didn't care that we ate one of their friends for dinner the night before), emus (I think they would have cared but I couldn't find them on the menu anywhere) and wallabies (I hear they are used for stews but are rather chewy). It seemed that many of the animals were off for the holiday as well as we stopped by empty exhibit after empty exhibit. But we did get to see a couple of swimming platipuses (or is it platipi?) which are much smaller than they look on television as well as the lone Australian Little Penguin (that is really what they are called, Little Penguin... sounds like something that some one that would name their silver goldfish Silver and their gold goldfish Goldy would come up with...) left to entertain the hundreds of children peering through the glass. He liked to tease everyone by doing a quick swim by and then disappearing for a long period of time. Even though gorillas are not native to Australia, we could help stopping by to watch them eat lunch and play, (I guess they didn't want to pay taxes either).

After our quick tour, we moved on to more important things... shopping. We took the ferry back to Sydney and then hopped on a train to the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) for a bit of shopping. The QVB is the cities first mall... built in 1898. You can either choose to take a guided tour for $10 or tour on your own (free for me, a bit more for Angie...).

To thank Paul with putting up with me for the last week and Angie for the last two weeks, we decided to test our ability to cook in the southern hemisphere by making Paul and his girlfriend, Melissa, dinner. We had to make a lot of guestimates at the grocery store as well as in the kitchen (such as how many grams of frozen berries equals 10 ounces? how much purple garlic do we need to equal 2 normal sized garlic cloves?). We looked up the important stuff... such as what temperature to set the oven to. The good news is, it all turned out great and I think we will all be making the lemon shrimp linguine again. If you'd like to give it a try, send me an email and I'll forward the recipe your way.

Today is my last full day in Sydney and I still have to go to the opera house. I've seen it from on top of the Harbour Bridge, across the harbour at the zoo, and on multiple ferry crossings but today, I plan to actually see it up close. Hopefully it will be worth the trouble... check out my next blog to find out.

Wine, Beach, Harbor and Wine

If there was a theme to the weekend in Sydney it would have to be wine and sun.

We woke up Saturday morning to find clear skies without a cloud in sight so we decided we need to take advantage of the great weather by heading to Manly Beach. Before heading to the beach we made a quick photo stop at the North Head where the ocean meets Sydney Harbor. The North Head is a former military base to keep unwanteds out of Sydney but now is a nice national park with some spectacular views of the various bays of Sydney.

After snapping our pics, we headed back down the hill into Manly. There was quite a bit of traffic and after we parked we found out why. We happened upon the Manly Wine and Food Festival. Most impressive, it turns out Australians have solved the problem with trying to eat while holding a wine glass by devising a way to hang the glass around your neck. Brilliant, these Aussies.

The food queues (that's a line for you Americans) were quite long so after one we decided to sit down at a roof top bar for some pub food. Fortunately, the bar did not object to us bringing our own wine from the festival below (BYO is quite popular and acceptable in Australia). What better way to enjoy a rare, sunny day in Sydney in June than with glass of wine at the beach.

After another glass or two, a bit of shopping we headed to Balmoral Beach. The sun had gone down and it was getting a bit chilly so I switched from wine to hot chocolate. After a day of drinking we were too beat to do much so we went to the movies. Since we're in Australia, we decided to see an Australian flick called Sampson & Delilah. The film was sad and thought-prevoking and possibly not the based choice when tired since there is very little dialog or even sound but I would highly recommend it to anyone that is interested in the current state of affairs of the Aborigines in Australia.

Sunday started off looking overcast and cold but by the time we motivated to leave Paul's flat, the fog burned off and left us with another spectacular day. Today we decided to head to Darling Harbour to check out the Sydney Jazz & Blues Festival. As is turns out, the best way to listen to jazz is with a glass of wine so we continued where we left off Saturday.

We decided to listen to the main show over dinner at an adjacent restaurant with patio seating. I've been wanting to try Australian food since I arrived and decided that I would just get it over with and order the kangaroo. Angie ordered magyu, an Australian (and Japanese) beef and we split the two dishes. Kangaroo, while not bad, was like a chewy steak and not nearly as tasty as the magyu dish. In the future if I'm craving a steak I'll just order a steak (or ostrich) and leave the kanga to the Aussies.

Tomorrow we're off to the zoo so I can check out what my dinner looked like while it was still hopping around in the outback.

Blue Mountains

After a day and a half hanging out with Angie in Sydney, it was time to ditch her and the city for two days in the Blue Mountains. Before leaving the states I booked an Aboriginal Walkabout with an Aborigine named Evan. I almost missed it altogether since Australians are not really in to announcing what station the train is approaching and the signs on the platforms are often hard to see. I glanced at my watch and realized I must have arrived in Falconbridge based on the time and just barely squeezed out through the closing door. I had about 15 minutes to wait before the tour was scheduled to start and was a bit surprised to find out I was only 1 km away from Danville. At 10:00 another train from Katoomba arrived and I was happy to learn that I would not be alone on the tour since San (short for Alexandra) from Belgium arrived looking as lost and bewildered as me. About 15 minutes later San and I were starting to wonder if there had been a mix up but then we saw Evan waving us up the stairs and over to him to begin the tour.

Without a lot of talking we blindly followed Evan away from the train station and into the bush. After about 10 minutes of walking we stopped at a tree where Evan asked us not to judge him for being white since there are no dark skinned aborigines left in the Derrick tribe. He then asked us to keep an open mind and just do what he says. This included rolling up eucalyptus leaves and sticking them in our noses, eating various bushtacca (sounded like bush taco, food from the bush) like berries we found on the ground, mushrooms growing off trees and the leaves of various trees. We then spent the next seven hours hiking (bushwalking) up and down the wet and slippery terrain (I have a nice bruise and abrasion as a souvenir), stopping occasionally to learn about aboriginal traditions, stories and ceremonies. When we stopped for lunch, we learned to paint on rocks and Evan painted our faces. By the time we emerged from the bush and entered a nearby pub, I felt like I had been on a walkabout for about a week. All I wanted was a hot shower and a good nights sleep. Fortunately San was staying at the same backpackers where I had made a reservation for the night in Katoomba so she escorted me to my home for the night and even shared some of her shampoo with me since I forgot mine in Sydney.

After a good nights sleep, I went exploring on my own for the day. The backpackers gave me a map and suggested a hike and off I went. It rained most of the night leaving the trail wet and muddy. I really did not want to spend the day on a walkabout with wet socks so I had to call on my long ago dance and gymnastic skills to balance on the narrow dry, narrow strips and when they weren't present, leaping over the puddles. I only missed a couple of times. After about an hour of walking, I finally got my first glimpse of the three sisters rock formation (the most famous view in the entire Blue Mountains region). After a dozen or so photos, I continued my walkabout down the "Giant Stairway". The stairway is made up of about 900 steps down to a lower trail below the three sisters. I was trying to keep count so I would know when I was close to the bottom, but after 150 or so steps, the trail became too treacherous to concentrate on counting. I walked another 2.5 km along the lower trail where I needed to decide whether to take another stairway back up or I could pay $10 to take the scenic railway. I thought about climbing the stairs but how could I turn down the opportunity to take the steepest railway in the world? After another hour or so, I completed my loop of the park and decided it was time to get a bite to eat before heading back to Sydney.

I'm happy to have spent a couple of days in the bush, but I couldn't wait to take a shower and put on clean clothes. I guess I'm just a city girl at heart.

First Full Day in Sydney

The day started off pretty easy. Paul (Angie's brother) escorted us across the ferry into Sydney and then took us to the Custom's House to get a birds eye view of the City. There is a scale model of Sydney under the plexiglass floor and Paul pointed out many points of interest that we might want to check out during the next week. I took the opportunity to practice the bridge climb, but more about that later.

After a quick coffee and scone, Paul headed to work while Angie and I took a bus to Hyde Park. We stopped into Saint Mary's Cathedral for a quick tour and prayer for a safe trip in Sydney. It is supposed to really be amazing when the sun is shining through the stained glass windows, but the day is overcast and threatening rain so we didn't get to experience this.
After peaking in the church we made a few wrong turns but finally found our way to the Hyde Park Barracks. The Barracks was essentially a prison built by prisoners about 150 years ago. From the looks of the hammocks that they slept in, the early settlers in Australia were shorter than me. The barracks were later converted to an orphange of sorts for all the teenage girls imported from Ireland during the potato famine to help even out the male female ratio on the island. It served as a court house more recently before being turned in to a museum.
After a mad dash in the rain, we bought ourselves a couple of umbrellas and grabbed lunch at a nearby cafe. Of course by the time we finished eating the sun came out. Our next stop was the Royal Botanical Gardens. After about 20 minutes of searching, we finally found what we were looking for... the thousands of fruit bats that call the botanical gardens home. Since the bats are nocturnal, we found them hanging upside down from the trees sleeping. From a distance they looked like pine cones but I've never seen a palm tree with pine cones before. We did get a chance to use our new umbrellas just in case the bats decided to go to the bathroom while we walked under the trees.

I think Angie could have watched the bats for hours, but we had to head to the Rocks for our bridge climb. The walk started off pleasantly enough, but when we were about half way there it started to rain. I'm not talking a pleasant April shower sort of rain but rather a torrential downpour. Our umbrellas did a good job keeping our hair dry but by the time we arrived at the Bridge Climb office our pants looked like we just pulled them out of the rinse cycle. I've never been so glad to have to don an ugly jumper (required uniform for the climb) but it was dry while my clothes were soaked. Our guide Dan, helped us get strapped in to all of our safety gear and walked us through a practice climb on the bridge simulator before taking us out to the bridge. Fortunately during this time, the rain had moved past and we were able to enjoy, the dry, but overcast climb 150 meters above the water and traffic onto the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It is amazing that the city approved this type of tour, but I'm certainly glad they did. The geaky structural engineer that still lives deep down inside of me was thrilled to be climbing on the worlds heaviest truss bridge in the world with a spectalur view of the Sydney Harbor and the Opera House in the background. We got plenty of time to take in the view and see downtown Sydney light up as the sun went down (unfortunately the sunset was obstructed by the rain clouds) before heading back down the bridge. And if the day couldn't get any better, Paul had dinner ready for us when we got back. I think this is going to be a great vacation...

Sydney At Last

I left from San Francisco at 9:00 PM on Sunday and arrived in Sydney at 9:00 AM on Tuesday. June 1st did not exist for me. Did anything monumental happen while I was traveling through time?

The flight from San Francisco to Sydney is rather long during the best of conditions... but it is even longer when you have to stop over in Aukland for a few hours... and longer still when you have a very unhappy baby in the row behind you. During the first hour of the baby crying I felt bad for the baby. During the second hour, my sympathy changed to the parents, but during the third hour I just felt bad for me. I fell into a rhythm of sleeping when the baby was sleeping and then watching movies when the baby was crying. As a result, I squeezed in 3 1/2 movies (The Reader, Taken, Bride Wars, and about 1/2 of Confession of a Shopaholic) during the 13 hour flight. I even squeezed in 2 more on the 3 1/2 hour flight from Aukland to Sydney (Last Chance Harry and something else that I've already forgotten).

After 5 1/2 movies and 2 breakfasts, I could wait to start my exploration of Sydney. I met up with Angie and her family at the airport and helped Angie and her brother Paul send off their parents and sister back to the states (to make room for me). Then we headed to Paul's flat. I have to say that the first 15 minutes I could have been in any city USA with the exception of the cars driving on the wrong side of the road. But then we rounded a corner and suddenly both the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge came into view. I finally felt like I had arrived and couldn't wait to start exploring. Of course, none of that could happen until I took a must-needed shower.

After my shower and a bit of unpacking, Angie and I went on a walkabout (I've decided to refer to all walks in Australia as walkabouts because it makes me feel more Australian) in the area surrounding Paul's house in Neutral Bay. We got some great pics of the Sydney skyline before heading back inland to window shop along the main drag.