Seeing the Sights of Sydney

We've been good tourists, and have been seeing some of the obligatory sights of Sydney....but to be honest, as of yesterday, my thoughts have been preoccupied with the fact that we will be landing in Bali sometime tomorrow! Crazy. All of our creature comforts and ease of travel will be suddenly stripped from us. In most ways I am excited, as in some ways it feels like the true start of our trip, but I will not deny there is some nervousness there as well. I have to remember, that this is exactly how I felt 10 years ago when Cari and I took off for Mexico with no expectations, and it turned into one of the best experiences of my life. I'm sure this will be the same. Our plan, after landing in Denpasar, Bali, is to head northeast immediately to lesser populated areas. We will not be dawdling in the big cities for any longer than necessary and are going to skip the southern part of Bali entirely (you know, where all that bad stuff happens). We will go to a small town on the east coast, and the plan is to head to the island of Lombok the next day.

Anyway, back to Sydney. After exalting on how great the local transportation is here, we are coming off the public transportation day from hell yesterday. Just as we had the subway/trains all figured out, we came to see that for this weekend only, the trains running to our neighborhood will be shut down for maintenance. Great. Then we go out to catch the bus yesterday, only to find that the bus won't be coming to our busstop due to a local festival/fair. It was quite comical. We eventually made it via bus to another train stop, where EVERYONE was rerouted and everyone was headed into the city. So once the train came we had to literally cram ourselves into the car....it reminded me of those TV shots I've seen from China or Japan, where they literally shove people into subway cars. It wasn't that bad, but it was pretty tight. 1 hour and 45 minutes later after being on a bus, a subway and a ferry, we arrived at our destination of Manly Beach. An oceanside beach where people just go to chill. We did the same, soaking up some sunshine, playing in some waves, then heading back to the mainland. Then in trying to plan our evening missed two more buses, but eventually got back to the hostel, showered, got back on a bus (I know, I think half of our day was spent on public transport), then treated ourselves to a play and dessert. We were going to see something at the opera house, but nothing there was anything we wanted to spend our money on, so we picked a comedy at the university theatre. It was pretty good - not great, but good.

The day before, we basically got ourselves familiar with the city. Walking around a good chunk of it and taking a ferry around the harbor. Here are two of the more famous sites, although not very good photographs.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge:


And the Opera House:


From there, we walked around Darling Harbor, took in a not very good Imax show (the largest screen on earth), and a very good digeridoo show which was free. We discovered that I can make my lips vibrate (necessary to play the digeridoo), but Keith cannot. Must be linked to the curling-your-tounge gene.

Today, we're going to take in the aquarium, then do all our last minute travel preps for tomorrow. Keith is trying to confirm that we even have a flight as we speak....we're not finding our flight online....oh boy. Always check a couple days ahead on your flights when you're flying internationally! They can change on you!

Ok, I think that's it for now. I think you can count on the blogs either sharply decreasing in length and/or frequency. Who knows what Indonesia has to offer. And pictures may become much harder to show you. I hope not, but we'll find out soon.

Think safe travel thoughts for us, and we'll be in touch!