Escape from Planet Sheep
Trip Start
May 21, 2007
1
36
44
Trip End
Mar 30, 2008
Sydney,
Australia
Sunday, November 25, 2007
An uneventful flight and a short train ride brought us into the heart of the Sydney Chinatown area, where we'd booked into a 7 storey hostel on a corner of Georges St. First impressions of the city - once we'd dumped our bags, made our bed (this seems to be one of the Ozzie backpacker trademarks - in an effort to save money/give their guests some exercises, hostels just hand you fresh sheets when you check in and expect you to hand back the 'soiled' ones at check out. I'm sure there has got to be some hygiene issue with a queue of people standing with dirty laundry waiting to check out at 9am every morning, but the hostel staff don't seem to notice. Or they are immune to infection.) and showered were excellent. It's a vibrant, buzzing place with an extraordinary mix of people wandering it's streets.
Our hostel was in Chinatown as I mentioned, so you'd expect hundreds of our chopstick-loving cousins wandering around - and lo and behold there were. But in every nook and cranny of the city (excepting the beaches) there were countless Oriental folk - the city of Sydney seems overrun by a new wave of immigrants. It adds a certain twist to the city, with oodles of sushi bars and Chinese BBQ restaurants, and it's kind of funny watching all of the Asians trying to dodge the sun as the more European-looking inhabitants all seem to be turning a browner shade of tan.
The first thing we did was walk down to the famous harbour front to drink in the views of Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Sitting almost side by side, with the skyline of the CBD behind it, these two Aussie icons are every bit as impressive in the flesh as you'd hope. The folds of the Opera House and the off white exterior are just beautiful, and never more so than when the sun is setting and they seem to glow a creamy orange colour. And Harbour Bridge just looks so....huge. It's just a steel and concrete monster, carrying 6 lanes of traffic and a train line across the Bay.
That night we sat down trying to draw up a list of must-sees, and believe me, Sydney has a loooong list. Of course, one of the places we had to visit was Bondi beach, so early the following morning, Marge and I jumped on the "Bondi Bendy" as the bus to the beach is called, rolled out our towels and slapped on our suncream amongst acres of some of the brownest white people God ever put on this earth. The beach has something of a bad reputation for being noisy and crowded, but on a sunny Tuesday morning it was perfect. We were not quite the palest people on the beach - it was close, but not quite - and we kicked back and started to bake under an ozone-free sky. After a few minutes of sitting there, we began to hear one Irish accent after another. It was hilarious to see these sun-tanned beach bums with sun bleached hair and Billabong shorts shouting at one another in thick Arklow accents. Ah, those glorious UV rays....
(which reminds me of something I meant to tell you...everyone in the city is tanned, and yet the only suncream you seem to be able to buy in supermarkets and chemists is factor 30+. The heat here can get up to industrial proportions and the UV rays must be bruising. Either that or some weirdos are rubbing themselves in butter as they lie there).
The following day brought overcast skies, and there they sat for most of the rest of our time in Sydney, breaking only on Sunday. It gave Marge and I the perfect opportunity to see the sights without passing out from the heat. We marched around aquariums and museums, mooched around art gallaries and shopping malls and generally tried to see as much as we could in the time we had in the city. We loved it, and ate more sushi and Vietnamese food than I think I've ever managed before. It wasn't easy to stay on budget in the city, but $6 sushi lunches eaten in the beautiful Sydney parks certainly helped.
On Saturday night, we headed out into the burbs to hook up with an old Irish Broadband workmate who moved back to Sydney a few years ago. Painfully enough for an Australian, his name is Bruce and as he was celebrating his birthday he invited us along to his Aussie BBQ'ing shindig. We had a ball, and had a strange sequence of coincidences when we were introduced to his Irish girlfriend Claire. Although none of us were aware of it before, in the course of our first five minutes chatting with her we realised she'd been in my school and Sineads college....20 minutes of "do you remember so and so"s later, we had enough watery beer to mingle a little and laugh with/at (take you pick) at some of the other guests. Things went on a little later than Marge and I had bargained for, and when we finally woke up on Sunday lunchtime it was all we could do to drag ourselves out of bed. Down we marched to an Irish pub we'd seen on our travels for a big dirty roast beef dinner (complete with yorkshire puds and horseradish) and settled down in Hyde Park for a game of Scrabble in the sunshine.
Some time later, Bruce and Claire came into the city and we floated down to an openair gig in the middle of the Botanic Gardens for some hair of the dog and a mellow chat. We finished off the day sitting on Manly Beach for a fish and chip dinner and a stroll around some of the swankier burbs of Sydney.
A very pleasant way to end our week on the town I'm sure you'll agree.
