An Aussie Sheila Named Sydney

Traveling, something I promised myself I'd do after school was over. To see the world and stand before all those wondrous things we read about in books and see on TV, and along the way meeting a million or so incredibly interesting people that I cross paths with in my journeys abroad.

When I speak to different people back home about traveling the world, I seem to find two sects of personal opinions on the subject: Those that dream of traveling, and if given the opportunity would gladly jump on a plane with me and run away to a far off place, and that other group of people that seem to come up with a hundred excuses why it's simply too much of a hassle to leave their quiet little corner of the world, and seem all too content to live out their lives held up under their rock.

So, this past August, I decided I'd make the longest of my trips...Australia, a most unique and incredible place on the opposite side of the planet.

Day 1+2:
Let's start with the obvious downside to traveling around the world...the flight. I'd really like to encourage you all and say it wasn't that bad...but, it's worse. Traveling from Boston to Sydney took 27 hours of continuous travel (the worst being the 18 hour flight from L.A. to Sydney), and the INSANE time change associated with that. When I arrived in Sydney it was 7:30pm on Sunday, yet my body was damn sure it was 5:30am (Saturday actually just about never existed for me that weekend (because of the drastic time zone change)). I can't sleep on planes...I have no idea why...so I read A LOT, and Quantas is awesome about movies and such, so I just about caught up with every movie I've never seen...EVER.

When we landed in Sydney and went through customs I got my first taste of Australian humor, as security went through my luggage in search of Ranch Dressing (I'm serious, they have major issues with ranch dressing), for whatever reason Americans smuggle ranch dressing into Australia..is simply beyond me (actually it's the chicken eggs in the dressing). The cab driver...like all cab drivers...was from a country foreign to the one he works in, mine was from Italy. Although I'll come to find out that Sydney is really one of the most culturally diverse places on Earth. Off to the hotel to force myself to sleep off the jet lag.

Day 3:
The next morning we ventured out into Downtown (my hotel was smack-dab in the center of the downtown area). For breakfast we found a cute little street side cafe (just like the other thousand or so in the area). I ordered a breakfast sandwich...but in Australia...they put BBQ sauce on their eggs...it was...interesting. (NOTE: food in Australia is expensive, although you NEVER tip, seriously. Also take care about what you order, sometimes the menus with contain items your familiar with, only when it comes to the table…your scratching your head. Meat pies are a favorite over there, but their meat pies…DISGUSTING). After breakfast we visited Sydney's Chinese Gardens in downtown, near the waterfront. It seems that the Australians have been making serious efforts to have stronger relations with their Asian neighbors, and the Chinatown in Sydney is an obvious example of the growing influence of Asian culture in Australia, especially Sydney. Afterwards, we walked the wharfs for a bit. Most of the Sydney area is waterfront. The city itself is actually divided up over the length of the bay, on both shores. A great deal of traveling through the region is done on ferry, hydrocraft, or water taxi. My second encounter with Australian humor was during a ferry ride, when someone pointed of that the tower that controls all the births in the harbor is known as "The Pill". Another example from that day was the Office of Records in Sydney, which handles the country's birth, marriage and death records...or as they call it "The Hatch, Match and Dispatch Office". (SIDE NOTE: the public transportation system is amazing, and CHEAP. For almost pennies you can traverse the area for days. They have a visitors pass called "The Sydney Pass" it's like $30 American, and can keep you moving around the city for days.)

After our "Walkabout' we jumped on and off the buses for a bit, did the basic tourist junk and got an overall feel for the city. Visited Bondi Beach that day, it was also my first glance into the giant tourist industry and how so many people try to sell knock off Aboriginal artifacts. However I did find one authentic Aboriginal owned store in Sydney, but he was very overpriced. I ended up purchasing one of my boomerangs there, as well as some incredible paintings of the "dreamtime" ...worth every penny (I never saw another artist like that for the rest of the trip-that's important).

Day4:
Today we decided to get outside the city a bit and see some of the sites beyond the city limits (The city of Sydney is technically like 50 miles wide). We visited the Featherdale Wildlife Refuge, got my chance to hang out LITERALLY with Kangaroos (very charismatic when you play with them...they seem to love little kids), Koalas (so timid, until you feed them...), Wombats (oblivious)..and just about every other Australian animal you can imagine. It's a cool place, with the exception of the more dangerous animals like Crocs and Cassowaries, you can interact with them, their not caged or anything, they just run free. Although I don't think the Kookaburra birds like people much.

Wentworth Falls was just a photo op, but being in the Blue Mountains brought up a great point. In Australia...the horizon is always a deep shade of blue, not the sky...the landscape. Next time you look into the sky, take note of how the sky slowly fades to white the closer it comes to the horizon line. In Australia...it's the opposite...the horizon turns MORE blue. Why, because of the Eucalyptus leaves. There is so much oil in the leaves, that when it evaporates...it turns the horizon blue. The down side to all this oil in the leaves…is forest fires. In Australia they have an incredible amount of forest fires, however, because it's such a natural occurrence, the plants and animals have built up defenses against the fire. Animals dig deep into the ground and wait out the flames, while trees and plants build up extra layers of bark that they can strip away after the fire is out.

While up in the Blue Mountains, we went on this God awful train ride down the steepest (52 degree) grade railroad IN THE WORLD...that was just crazy. We had tea (I had tea 8,000,000 times on this trip) up on a Cliffside and headed back towards Sydney. The bus's final stop (the tour was only 17 people) was the Olympic park…horrible. If you've even been to the one in Montreal, it's just as depressing and drab. It just seemed so lifeless, even the Aussies I was with, made fun. The biggest joke was the 18 million dollar Baseball stadium (they don't PLAY baseball in Australia, although just to build interest, their fielding a team in the upcoming World Baseball Classic). We jumped on a ferry at the Olympic village back to downtown (central Sydney dock is called "Circular Quay").

Traveling down the bay gave me a chance to see the suburban areas a little more and it seemed life as usual just outside the downtown area. We arrived just after dark and stopped by a pub for dinner in "The Rocks" part of town (the original settlement in Australia…now home to about 100 pubs). On the subject of drinking and pubs, the workday in Australia ends at 5pm, NOONE works late, even the retail stores close. EVERYONE in town, no matter their social class, their job, their ethnicity gets together in the pubs and drinks the night away...EVERYDAY. It's amazing, the whole city, every night, would just turn into a massive pub crawl (oh and only tourists drink Fosters).

That night we made our way, walking back through the city and found myself walking right into a chase scene being filmed for Superman the movie. I guess many of the movie studios now do a great deal of their production in Australia due to tax breaks and incentives. It was rather interesting to see how they had modified the area of town into "Metropolis" architecture and were going as far as washing the street with fire hoses with one crew of workers, while another group walked 20 yards behind them with flamethrowers drying the water. The car involved in the chase scene was actually three cars. They had a perfect version, one partially damaged, and one that was a wreck. The cameras, actors and crew grabbed my attention for at least an hour.

Interesting people from the tour:

Steve- the tour guide, he was actually a transplanted Kiwi.

Sharlene – nice sweet mom-type traveling alone.

Dave & Sarah – A couple living in Bangkok, but his computer job was uprooting them to Munich soon.

Ellen and Gert – Our new found friends from Holland on a 4-month vacation after college to Australia and Canada.

"Taiwanese Mafia" – the named coined by our tour guide. A group of Japanese girls all majoring in English. They were basically a group of giggling girls with cameras who spoke horrible English.

Jason – Some weird fellow from San Francisco who was traveling alone. Didn't say a whole lot.

Sarah & Lucy – made the tour. Two girls from the London area (Brighton in particular). They were on a 6-week vacation from beauty school. They "tried ' to teach me cockney slang. (ex. Scuba down the ole' kermit to fetch some tucker for me wok smuggler. = Let's go get something to eat.) They'd be proud.

Day 5:
Woke up and went back to Rosa's (the sidewalk café) at this point we were on a first name basis with the wait staff and had my own table. The waitress went over our "To Do' list and made changes and recommendations. We started with the Sydney Aquarium. I saw a Platypus (their much smaller then I thought they'd be, maybe 10 inches long). Next example of Aussie humor. The Salties (crocodiles) was sunken into the ground, you could jump in if you wanted, but the sign said "If the fall doesn't kill you, the Crocs will!!!" Did some walking through Hyde's Park and found ourselves at the Sydney Opera House. So seeing as it was our anniversary, we bought tickets for that evening (chi-ching), but I figured "Well, it is the Sydney Opera House, it will be worth the money." We finished up the daylight hours with some tourist stuff.

Off to the Symphony. Despite how well known the exterior of the Opera House is, the interior is unimpressive, and is mostly pop-culture 1970's architecture, all wood paneling and dull orange hues. The Symphony we attended, required all my energy to keep me awake, and some poking from Alyssa (who also dozed off). I tried desperately to envision storyline for the music, but most of the time it backfired into unconsciousness. After a quick cab ride home, I was left with an excellent memory that many people would find interesting, if only I left out the details.

Day 6:
My last day in Sydney before I jumped on a plane north to tropical Cairns (we'll go there in another blog entry). Breakfast at Rosa's (of course). We visited the Powerhouse Museum, it's an applied Sciences museum, where they change all the exhibits every year, sort of interesting in it's own way. A walk through Paddy's Market, it was a glorified flea market. Then we took a ferry over to Toranga Zoo (yah more animals). Fell in love with Echidnas, coolest animal, incredible personable and charismatic. After leaving the zoo, I thought we 'd do some shopping, but I found out quickly that most of the shopping in downtown is VERY upscale and not really my thing. Also, anything imported from the Western Hemisphere (i.e. USA) is incredibly mocked up in price.

Final thoughts on the city:
Very expensive (like most cities)
No tipping = poor service by American standards
Best zoo ever (it's all about the animals in Australia)
Incredibly clean city
Driving on the opposite side of the road is going to get someone killed
Winter averages in the 60's temperature wise.
Don't buy those Opera tickets.

I'd live there. The city is incredibly diverse, and seemed very stress free for the inhabitants. Everyone was very helpful and rather cheerful. The transportation is unmatched (they even have a monorail). There were always big crowds and a lot of action all day and all night. I loved the hybrid of Asian culture meets traditional British society, it was intriguing. The cities architecture was something you could stare at all day, a mix of Victorian and Elizabethan buildings surrounding huge modern skyscrapers. I loved it.