January 8 - January 15

Uluru to Sydney
Qantas 729
Departs Thursday, Jan. 8 - 12:30 PM
Arrives Thursday, Jan. 8 - 5:00 PM

Things to see and do:

Blue Mountains
Sydney Opera House
Bridge Climb
Bondi Beach

Thursday, January 8

As mentioned in the last post, we left Ayers Rock Thursday morning. Our journey started with a bus from the fly resort to the airport. The flight was pretty stress free and we arrived in Sydney on time. After getting our bags, we checked with the train folks and determined our best bet was to get a week-long transportation pass along with a return airport train ticket. This seemed easy enough so we bought and caught the train to Sydney Central station. From there we determine we needed to take the tram (light rail) to our apartment. This was another ticket so we bought a week pass for that (which also works on the monorail) and headed towards the hotel where our apartment is and got off at what we thought was the correct stop. We knew there was a monorail stop attached to the hotel and we briefly considered taking the monorail from here, but the conductor indicated we could walk through the parking garage to get there. He was correct - although it meant changing floors in the garage twice (for some reason the elevator didn't go through all the floors). We finally arrived after our bus/plane/train/tram/almost-monorail journey. In hindsight, a taxi would have been much easier. In Sydney we've rented a high-rise apartment which is in the Darling Harbour area of Sydney which is very nice, although a bit noisy. We've determined that there are a lot of parties, including many bachelor/bachelorette parties, occurring during the weekends.

We unpacked (yippee!), ate dinner at a pub across the street, and bought essentials at the grocery store around the corner.

After that, it was off to bed after a looooong day.

Friday, January 9

Cliff and D.Ray got an early start Friday and headed off to a Market near the apartment. Doug and Travis rested up (we were still tired from our marathon day in Ayers Rock) and finally left the apartment about noon. We grabbed lunch and then ran into Cliff and D.Ray and made plans to go to the Sydney Aquarium a bit later. The Aquarium was packed but very good despite the crowd.

It's a big aquarium and it seems like all of the fish are very active. They have a special showing of dugongs (related to the manatees which occasionally get sidetracked in Buffalo Bayou in Houston). Their reef aquarium has huge sharks and stingrays. They also have a couple of box jellyfish (luckily not alive since they can kill humans). Overall, it was a pretty good showing of aquatic life.

Somehow at the aquarium, Doug and Travis lot track of Cliff and D.Ray, so Doug and Travis headed to Paddy's Market where Cliff and D.Ray were earlier in the morning.

The lower level of the market is something like a flea market. It was very similar to the market in Melbourne but was a bit more organized. Above it, is a huge mall. We shopped around a little bit and Travis bought a new case for his iPhone.

We met up with Cliff and D.Ray back at the apartment and had dinner back at the pub across the street (it's open 24 hours and has free internet).

Saturday, January 10

Saturday was a very easy day as we had few plans other than heading to the beach. D.Ray had signed up for a couple of dives while in Sydney and the first one left Saturday afternoon from Manly Beach Wharf. We headed over there (Tram/Train/Ferry) and arrived just in time for him to make his dive boat. One nice aspect of Manly is that it requires a ferry to get there and it's a really nice trip through Sydney Harbor. Cliff Travis and Doug spent the whole afternoon being beach bums on Manly beach (probably Sydney's second most popular beach). It's a big beach and had nice sand and waves. There are a lot of lifeguards (called "surf rescue" here) all watching the water. They occasionally used a PA system to call out to folks in the water who were using too big or the wrong type of boogie board. They're very particular here. We also noticed that there is no age limit to be part of surf rescue. There were some "seasoned" lifeguards out there. We presume that once you become part of surf rescue, you stay surf rescue. We had a really nice afternoon and then headed back to the apartment and had dinner (after spotting the dog sign in the pictures on the right!).

Sunday, January 11

We had so much fun being bums on Saturday that we decided to repeat it all again on Sunday (at least Travis and Doug - D.Ray had another dive trip from Manly). This time we decided on Bondi Beach (supposedly the most popular Sydney beach). After an easy tram/train/bus trip, we were there and back on the sand. It's also a really nice beach with lots of folks there and very good people watching. It's so big that we noticed that people were constantly getting lost getting back to their stuff. Everything looks the same. Luckily we parked ourselves right behind someone with a bright yellow beach umbrella that was easy to spot (we'd like to say that was planned, but it would be a stretch). They also have surf rescue here, but probably not as many. The currents and the waves weren't quite as severe as what they were at Manly.

There were a bunch of restaurants over there so we had some really nice Thai food before heading back Sunday night.

Monday, January 12

In Sydney, they actually let you climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. They have very organized tours and yesterday we booked one for 8:25 am. We underestimated the amount of time that it would take on all of this public transportation (tram/train for this this location) to get there and we ended up being about 15 minutes late. Luckily they had availability for a slightly later tour and off we went. They are very particular about climbing their bridge. They use a breath analyzer to make sure you're not under the influence. Then, you're not allowed to bring any personal items along at all. You have to put on one of their jumpsuits (along with an assortment of safety gear) and then you have to walk through a metal detector. They don't want you bringing anything that could possibly fall onto the traffic below (that might create quite the surprise for the unsuspecting driver to get a new camera through their windshield). You also have to clip anything like hats or glasses to your jumpsuit. You're also given a radio so you can hear the tour header. And a safety harness with a safety cable that runs along with you is required for the entire climb. We should probably explain that the climb isn't that much of a climb. There are a few ladders that have to be navigated carefully, but there is a fairly easy foot path that goes over most of the rest of the bridge. You are walking over some traffic and perhaps under an occasional train, but it's all very safe and they go at a fairly easy pace. We got to rest a bunch. The humidity was 80% and it was really sunny, so we were all very hot and sweaty by the time we finished it.. It takes about 3 1/2 hours from check-in to return. We got to see some very amazing views of Sydney and got to hear a lot about the history of the bridge.

Here is some of the useless trivia that we learned: 6,000,000 rivets were used. 40,000 granite blocks were used for the face of the pylons that each took a week to complete. 800 houses were torn down (government owned so no one was compensated for the move - we learned this on our later The Rocks Tour) to make room for the bridge bases. At the time it was built, it was more than twice as tall as the tallest building in Sydney. In the 50s, one of the pylons was leased out as a residence to a crazy cat lady.

As if we weren't hot and sweaty enough, Doug and Travis decided to go to the Zoo. Cliff and D.Ray were smart enough to have an easy day back at Manly Beach.

We took one of the ferries to the zoo. The zoo has an outstanding view of Sydney (too bad we didn't know that back for New Years Eve). We're not sure how they do it, but most of the animals in the zoo are very active. The Aussies are also very entrepreneurial, and they've figured out how to make even more money at the zoo than the normal admission charges. You can pay to feed a giraffe, pet a koala (and have your picture taken) and few others activities that we can't remember. We stumbled into someone feeding the giraffes and it was one of the funniest things we've ever seen. There were a total of three giraffes and only one was getting fed at a time (with carrots). There was one in particular who must have really wanted a carrot and his tongue was going all over the place in the hopes of getting one. We have both a picture and a short video clip of the giraffe.

They have some zoo keeper talks and we decided to stop by the one for the lions. It was very interesting and a little scary at the same time. It was coming up on feeding time, and the lions obviously knew it and started pacing around. One of the lions (the father) apparently didn't take too well to the young boy who was standing in front of us (we were in a thick glass-walled enclosure underneath the lions' den) and started charging and growling at the boy. We always thought that zoo animals didn't pay much attention to us humans. That apparently is not the case. Neither of us had our cameras ready for the event, but we did get a short clip of a second event where the lion did a mini-version of the same thing. Watch the lion's facial expression right before he completely turns back around the bush. That was just a small taste of what he did the first time.

The one thing that we really wanted to see at the zoo was a duck billed platypus. We've been trying to see one since we were in Tasmania, but we've had no luck. We didn't have any luck at the Sydney zoo either. There were two habitats of them. We didn't see one in the first habitat, and there was a sign saying that if we didn't see them, then we should go to their second habitat. Well, the second habitat was under renovation, so they weren't on display there. At this point, we're questioning whether or not they even exist.

We saw quite a few other animals that we we really liked, but we eventually got hot and sweaty enough that we decided to end our zoo experience.

We headed back to the apartment, cleaned up, and went to a steak restaurant for dinner.

Tuesday, January 13

Cliff and D.Ray headed home this morning. They were flying through Fiji which according to the news is having major issues with rain and flooding so hopefully they made it home OK.

We decided to start our day with a guided waling tour of The Rocks. We should first explain that The Rocks is an inner-Sydney neighborhood that was built starting back in 1788 on a rock cliff overlooking Sydney Harbour. There is a lot of history here! Sydney Harbour is very deep (naturally) and even the gargantuan cruise ships can get right into the middle of town. Because of the deep harbor, Sydney has really prospered over time. We got to hear how life was back in the original founding of Sydney and how a lot of things were built with convict labor. The black plague even made it to Sydney and the area around The Rocks due to the fact that the rocks didn't make for easy disposal of sewage. City leaders had to eventually set up a quarantine boundary through the middle of the city. Behind the main buildings, there are all of these little pedestrian streets with shops and cafes that are practically unnoticeable. We had lunch at one of them (we had a somewhat surly waitress who when Doug asked if anything came with his sandwich simply replied "yes" but walked off without telling him exactly what it came with). All in all, it was a great tour and we wished that we had taken it earlier in our Sydney leg. The city eventually bought up all of property in The Rocks. A huge high-rise development was planned in the 60s with many locals protesting. City officials eventually came to their senses and declared the area historic. There was one section where the plots of a series of row houses was marked off and some of the original foundations were still showing. An artist had "furnished" them with various sculptures to help us understand what life was like living there back then.

After lunch at one of the courtyard cafes, we headed to the Power House Museum. This museum is in what used to be the power supply building for the city tram system. Now it's a large museum with quite a wide array of exhibitions. They seem to move things through pretty quickly and right now have a Star Wars exhibit which seemed to e hugely popular (we skipped that) with the kids. While the museum seems slightly slanted towards science, they have lots of things that are clearly not science related (they had a big display on design through the ages as well as a display of recent design class winners - sort of like Project Runway). They had a pretty neat section on computing and a section that dealt with all the different senses (along with lots of interactive displays to demonstrate). Given the origin of the building, they had a huge display of various steam engines. The building is very large so they had room for airplanes, locomotives and other large displays. All in all, not a bad museum although we both enjoyed the museum we visited in Perth better.

After a rest back at the apartment, we headed to Chinatown for dinner. Dinner was at tables out on the street and was quite good. Afterwards, we tried to get tickets for our Wednesday Blue Mountain trip but failed as they'll only sell them for the day of use.

Wednesday, January 14

On Wednesday, we had a pretty early start to head out to the Blue Mountains. This is another World Heritage site located about 100 km west of Sydney (it's about a 2 hour train ride). Once there, they have a hop-on/hop-off bus that has about 30 stops around various parts of the National Park. They use OLD double decker buses from London. Unfortunately, the buses don't have AC or really even useful windows so it was pretty toasty in them.

The bus is pretty convenient in that you can get off the bus and do bush walks up several stops - choosing from a bunch of different walks based on what you're willing/able to do. We ended up doing two different walks during the day including one that crossed one of the many waterfalls in the park as well as one that went past a rock formation called the Three Sisters. The park is full of hundreds of different types of eucalyptus trees and it's the oil mist from the trees that gives the park its name. It's basically a tropical rainforest type climate and they've recently discovered trees that were thought to have died out during the time of the dinosaurs (they won't tell you where the trees are because they don't want people messing with them).

Wednesday was really hot here and by 2PM we were tiring of the heat and walking and decided to go to an IMAX film about the area (where we learned about the recently discovered trees).

The scenery here was pretty remarkable and it's a bit amazing that it's all so close to Sydney and the coast.

After another two hour train ride back to Sydney to the apartment, we started to pack up for the trip home on Thursday.

We headed across Darling Harbour for some seafood. In the harbour they had set up a movie screen and were showing a free film. From our restaurant, you could see the film (although the movie wasn't really worth watching - Run Lola Run). There are at least two places in Sydney where they do these screens in the water for outdoors movies during the summer.

After dinner, it was back to the apartment to try to get everything updated here before our flights home tomorrow.

Thursday, January 15

We've got a crazy early start tomorrow to get to the airport for our flights. We're both looking forward to a number of things:

Tex-Mex
Not having to wear sunscreen every day
Not having to wear our silly hats
Getting to wear some different shoes
Real internet available to us at anytime we want it

Despite that, neither of us is thrilled to be heading back to work.

Departing Sydney

Travis

Sydney to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific 110
Departs Thur, Jan 15 – 8:35 am
Arrives Thurs, Jan 15 - 2:50 pm

Hong Kong to San Francisco
Cathay Pacific 872
Departs Thur, Jan 15 - 5:05 pm
Arrives Thur, Jan 15 – 1:00 pm

San Francisco to Houston
Continental 430
Departs Thur, Jan 15 - 2;17 pm
Arrives Thur, Jan 15 - 8:02 pm