Sydney
Cliffs Notes Version:We had a few days to spend in Sydney. We walked around the harbour and checked out the opera house and bridge, went to the zoo, went to Bondi Beach, got chafed and sunburned, and watched Humphrey Bear.
| SydneyCliffs Notes Version:We had a few days to spend in Sydney. We walked around the harbour and checked out the opera house and bridge, went to the zoo, went to Bondi Beach, got chafed and sunburned, and watched Humphrey Bear. |
Day 1 (New Years Eve)I guess any story concerning a trip across the world would begin with the actual means of travel to get to the destination. Well, since Colleen and I are both broke grad students you would assume we would hitchhike as that would be the only form of travel we could afford ... but you would be wrong cause Australia is an island. Don't you feel stupid. Anyway, we flew. I know this has been covered before by other people, but I have to mention how strange it is to fly backwards across the International Date Line ... because you basically have just lost a day of your life. We had a connection in San Francisco that left on the 29th. We arrived in Australia on the 31st. Colleen and I never experienced December 30th ... at all. Even freakier is on the return trip we left Sydney at 3 p.m. and arrived in San Francisco at 9 a.m. that same day ... and all without the help of 1.21 jiggawatts being fed into the Flux Capacitor.So ... after the marathon of movies on the flight that I can proudly say were never going to make the cut for our Netflix queue, we arrived in Sydney. I once saw a game show bloopers show that went something like this, Host: What is the capital of Australia ... and it is not Sydney. Contestant: Hmmm ... Sydney That blooper, the opera house, and a random Chinese restaurant that Colleen wouldn't stop talking about was the extent of what I knew about Sydney before the trip. Ironically enough, all I knew about Australia was that the above mentioned stuff I knew about Sydney and that there were some people that knew how to throw boomerangs and actually make them return ... oh, and everything I could remember about the Crocodile Dundee movies. Anyway, we arrived in Sydney the morning of New Years Eve pretty darn jet lagged but running on adrenaline. Sydney is about 16 hours ahead of EST, so we were kind of out of it. This didn't stop Colleen from taking me on a 24 km (notice the switch to metric) hike around the city to show me everything she had done the last time she was in Australia. This included highlights such as the corner of the street where she first blew here nose in Australia, the museum that she walked by three years ago and thought about going in but didn't, and other highlights of her previous trip. For those that have ever went on a trip with Colleen, you will understand that she abhors public transportation and must walk everywhere and anyone that knows Nick knows that this is fine with him as long as there is a pub every few blocks to break up the trip.
Day 2So ... the next day we got up bright and early determined to change my inner thighs from their current medium rare steak consistency to something more resembling a steak tartar, I'm not much into suspense so I'll let you know up front, mission accomplished. But enough about my chaffing, back to the trip details. It was 44 degrees Celsius our second day. It's really easy to do the Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion and we got quite good at it, it's simply 1.8 times the Celsius temp and then you add 32 ... which means that 44 Celsius is ... yes ... hotter than the sun. Despite the heat we still spent all day walking around and hit up the opera house, the botanical gardens, Hyde Park, and the zoo.Lets chat about the zoo shall we? It's actually pretty crazy cause you take a ferry there and then once you get off the ferry you take a ski lift type thing up this cliff, and then once you get to the top of a cliff you have to ride a yak to the zoo. All right, I was kidding about the yak but everything else was true. So ... we were walking around the zoo and there was all these loudspeakers saying to make sure to stay hydrated but there wasn't one f'in water fountain in the place ... so I bitch slapped a gorilla and took his water. That'll learn him. When we got home I finally had proved myself hard-core enough to go to Colleen's favorite Australian restaurant ... the Chinese place that had the salt and pepper prawns that epic ballads are written about. The place is on the Circular Quay, which is the little water inlet where all the ferries leave from that is right next to the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. We had the 'fore mentioned prawns and a funky kangaroo dish. I must say that it was very good, but from the way Colleen built this place up I was kind of expecting a happy ending.
Day 3It rained all day so we kind of took it easy this day. We went to an Irish Pub that was in the middle of Chinatown that I found kind of amusing. Quick tip for anyone going to Australia ... if you want food at a pub you have to go to the bar to order. If you sit and wait for a waitress you look pretty dumb, though I must admit that if you are walking up to the bar all bow legged from being chaffed then you look pretty dumb too. Since this was a pretty slow day I am going to take a sec to talk about cricket. It's not much of an aside since I did watch cricket while I was eating lunch at the bar (and pretty much every bar I went to while I was there). So ... cricket is kind of like baseball if everyone on the baseball field looks like they came straight from and Abercrombie photo shoot, and if baseball took a week to play one game. I'd explain the rules, but I don't really know them. However, I did notice their pitcher (called a bowler) could actually take a running start to throw the ball. Also, if it rains in the slightest bit or if any of the players sneeze and not cover their mouth ... any kind of moisture on the field and they cancel play for the day. It's cause when they bowl (pitch the ball) they bounce it ... and now you know about cricket.
Day 4It was a nice day so we decided to go to the famous Bondi Beach. We got there in the morning and I had Colleen slather some lotion on my back (this tidbit of information will become important later). We went swimming for a bit but Colleen almost killed me so we stopped. Basically what would happen was a big wave would come and Colleen would chestbut it, and she would subsequently be thrown backwards. Not wanting to die alone, she would aim all her momentum my way to take me down with her. If she didn't get me on a direct hit, she would make sure to grab an ankle or something to make sure I went down and ingested at least as much salt water as her. This went on for a half an hour or so until I spit up a flounder and decided I had suffered enough.After laying out on the beach, Colleen decided we should go on the "Great Ocean Walk" which is a few kilometer hike along the cliffs overlooking the ocean on the way to another beach. It was going quite well until a few kilometers in we noticed the path ended at a bunch of big rocks lining the ocean. We could see that the rocks went for a kilometer or so and could also see what appeared to be the path at the end of the rocks. We thought we could handle them so we went ahead and started our rock climbing excursion. About half way through Colleen had a panic attack and told me to leave her and go on without her and gave me a letter to give to her mother in case she didn't make it. I gave her a pep talk and we successfully completed our trek across the rocks.
Day 5Okay, this was the last day in Sydney so since anyone reading this is probably getting tired of reading about that city, I'm going to have to talk about the greatest Australian TV show ever made ... Humphrey the Bear! We were introduced to Humphrey the morning of the 4th day and we fell in love. In fact, we almost cancelled the rest of the trip because we were unsure whether other Australian cities would carry him. Humphrey is about the size of Barney only he can't talk and he's a bear, not a dinosaur. He also hangs out with adults and when there's kids around the adults are there too so he doesn't give off that Michael Jackson vibe that Barney does. There's also this crazy song about a clock that words can't describe.
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