Sydney

Here I sit early in the morning in my hotel room, which I prefer always to be on a high floor, somewhere in Perth, where we arrived yesterday. I overlook a cricket stadium the size of the home of the Baltimore Orioles and restate to myself, that Aussies are different. When in London I need to check on the size of their cricket stadium some day.

(View from our small apartment overlooking the Sydney Opera House)

If you can not say much about a city, you better talk about its citizens.

(Spring is in the air in Kirribilli, Sydney)
(Shot from the ferry in passing)

We came with a lot of expectations to the largest city in Australia, of which we knew very little. Well, we had seen the iconic Sydney Opera House pictures and we knew that Sydney was the first penal colony. Now, it is a modern 4.5 million citizen filled metropole, like so many on this globe.


This is a continent/island with 23 million plus Aussies living on its edge all around the central barren outback.




(Botanic Gardens stretch on for miles of walking pleasure)


Australia, which has the same size as mainland USA, is occupied by 68 percent of its people in cities on only half a percent of its land mass. The other 32 percent are unevenly distributed over the 6 percent arable land mass, situated as a green lush collar around its arid center.

(Below: Marker in center of Sydney is official point for distance calculation in colonial times)
(Below: the old munitions fort is now a museum)

Only half a million people are living in the remaining outback.

I got from a friend a funny email (I am, as so many of you, on several distribution lists, which generate among others, scantily clad pictures of women with funny subtitles, jokes, political complaint sagas and other tidbits I apparently should be made aware of in other people's opinion) and sometimes various world statistics, among which in this email was the fact, that women consider Aussie men the sexiest men in the world.

I must admit that when we were on the Sydney coast line, we encountered more bare chested men than I had seen in years. I asked my better half, if she agreed with the above mentioned statistic and her reply was, that Aussies in general were almost as oversized as Americans (the same statistics email indicated, that an average American consumes 3,770 calories a day), which I took to mean as a no, despite the fact that her eyes lingered on some of those chests longer than I consider appropriate. Since this is a G rated blog no pictures are provided.

I can hardly understand the people here, when they talk to us about menus or directions or even wifi passwords, which is irritating, especially when you are trying to get connected. And I know, that most of you seem to think that I speak funny, but in my opinion the Aussie accent is far worse than when Japanese or Koreans talk in English to me.

Ok, ok, I will stop digressing as I do understand that you are getting anxious to hear about Sydney the city.

(Below: Manly Beach late afternoon on cloudy windy day)

So here we go:

We had an apartment in North Sydney, in a neighborhood called Kirribilli right across from Sydney's well known landmark: the Opera House. The state prime minister has his residence nearby having the same view by the way. We tried to visit the inside of the Opera House and checked on tickets to see Sir David Attenborough's new 3D nature show, that he brought to the opera house venue, which brings me to THE number ONE problem with Sydney or actually all of Australia: Everything is horribly expensive. We said no to 250 dollar tickets (PP) for the Attenborough presentation and limited our alcohol intake priced at 12 dollar beers and 18 dollar glasses of wine prices whenever we ventured in town.

(Christmas sales have started in department store windows)

An average lunch nears 60 plus dollars and that with us, as always being portion conscious, sharing plates. Menu items start at 20 plus going 40.

Although, they do have good seafood here and in general food was very tasty and a nice change from the Asian fare we had so far.

Number two problem: they need to take public transportation lessons from the Dutch. We always travel public transportation and definitely here, as taxi prices are high.

Researching options, we found a reloadable card called "opal", which supposedly covered trains (subway or metro here are called trains) and ferries and buses and hoped 20 bucks each would get us through 3 days, especially since Sundays would cost a max of $2.50 a day or so the brochure read.

Well, finding train stations was not easy (markings are too small) and knowing where to go inside the station is not customer friendly either.

When getting on a light rail train, we heard while on this train, that the fare was not covered by the card, setting us back an extra 7 dollars for a few stops on our $2.50 Sunday explorations. From hereon, we spied for "opal" signs on the transport vehicle of choice before clambering on.

(Scene of our cliff walk and below: we found lawn bowling on the cliffs)

On our last day of measured traveling, we found ourselves minus 65 cents on our card, 2 stops short of home and exited to upload the card with a few dollars, herein aided by a train official, who let us out a side gate (there are no upload machines in the stations - crazy - one has to find an outside convenience store), the minimum upload however was $10. So we again bought $7 worth of single tickets for the few remaining miles home. Enough about that.

Wifi is another beef with Aussies: they are not often available in public places, or when found, they do require passwords, that the servers are not aware of, or one has to start a hotspot subscription program.

(Scenes depicting remnants of the famous fall "sculptures by the sea" competition being dismantled as we pass by on our cliff walk)

Next beef: of the "top ten must see and do's" in Sydney, two require traveling 50 plus miles out of town with a tour bus or by rented car to marvel at the Blue Mountains and the Jenolan Caves. The following thing on the list of to do and see is: Sydney's beaches; most famous is Bondi Beach, filled with bare chested men and on warmer sunnier less windy days, bare chested girls, so the brochures read - because you see, Aussies are free spirited.

(Below: We encountered a huge cemetery halfway the walk with headstones going back 150 years, some in major disrepair, some with latest interments this year)
(What sea and wind can do to rock, and below an old Coogee establishment at the beach)
(St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney's center, a different view after those Asian countries)

So we thus did a walk from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach on and over about 4 miles of beautiful cliffs and we saw, as you already know, the Sydney Opera House, we did ferry all around the Sydney Harbor, walked the Botanic Gardens, walked over the Sydney Harbor Bridge and also walked the quaint Rocks neighborhood, but we were refused access to the Sydney Tower restaurant, one level below the observation deck, because we were not dressy enough attired, with our Keen walking shoes (no sport shoes allowed) and were not interested in the alternative: to pay $26.50 each for the elevator to the observation deck on a day, that was not optimal for viewing.

(Above and Below: Newsflash - there are more Hydeparks in the world)
(Above: Hydepark's only fountain and Below: Sydney's skyline Tower - we never went up there)
(Proper waiting line for the bus in downtown Sydney at a 5 pm working day)
("The" Harbour Bridge the object of every climber's desire as you can witness below)
(We tourists have different interests; mine to take this picture)

Another important tourist attraction is climbing the Harbour Bridge at the cost of at least $148 pp up to at peak twilight times $358 pp. We do not even climb stairs if there were elevators (called lifts here) or escalators. So paying for this seemed ridiculous. The bridge is the second famous icon in Sydney's skyline. As already mentioned we traversed it and on the other side took the stairs down into the Rocks, a quaint neighborhood filled with markets, under the bridge at the edge of downtown.

(If you look closely you spie 4 "barbies" in front of these offices in the warehouse district of Sydney - Aussies are different)
(There are also double phone booths around the city)

An interesting factoid is that Sydney has an abundance of phone booths here on its street corners, although I never saw one used during our three days of wandering.

(An unusual city bird we spotted around town: Ibis)

So experiencing a majority out of the "Top Ten" isn't that bad, considering that the out of town two and the aquarium were not on our list and the Government house was not open when we tried - only in the weekends are tours available.

We skipped Hop on Hop off buses, IMAX, multiple malls, Madame Tussaud and various other options seen in almost any major western city in the world.

(Anzac monument one day before Armistice Day - quiz: what does "Anzac" mean?)

While walking Chinatown we visited the Chinese Friendship Garden, a completed collaborative project between the city of Guangzhou and Sydney, a calming experience, where we saw good sized lizards staring at us.

(Following pictures denote moments of Zen)
(Oh, and there was this creature staring back at us - unimpressed and unafraid)
(The little one just hoped that staying frozen made him/her invisible)

And since our last day was Armistice Day, celebrated all over the whole British Commonwealth, we were showered with farewell fireworks, which we enjoyed from our balcony.

(Farewell fireworks just for us, witnessed from our balcony - a nice surprise )

If any of you feel we missed out on something in Sydney, that would have changed our feeling of slight disappointment, we would love to hear about it, It might bring us back to Sydney some day to experience what we may have missed.

(This Ibis must have left the compound and or is in the witness protection program)
(Jacaranda trees bloom only a few weeks a year - lucky us)

(They have school buses in Sydney)

 

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