Sydney, beneath clouds and rain
NEW ZEALAND | Tuesday, 30 March 2010 | Views [599]
3/30/2010 2:11 PM
Wow … holy crap this has been a process getting all of our trip booked and figured out. We’ve done some sightseeing stuff in Melb/Sydney, but it seems like all of our time in Oz has been spent at Peterpans Adventure Travel (at least on four separate occasions) figuring everything out. It was all supposed to be booked by the time we got into Sydney (yesterday morning), but the girl in Melb missed a couple things (booked us on a tour that doesn’t exist anymore; booked us on a bus that leaves after we get back from a tour; and some other dealies), so we spent a couple hours last night, and then a couple more this morning getting it all put together. HOWEVER … FINALLY … we’re all “booked” and can finally begin our Amazing Oz Adventure. Luckily, it was raining yesterday afternoon, and is supposed to be raining all day today, so we’re not missing any amazing beach weather. Right now, we’re just getting a little organized, and will head out shopping shortly. But here’s a recap from the train ride on …
The train ride was fun because it was a train ride, but we happened to sit in front of a very fat loud couple that munched on smelly food for the first hour, and then easily fell asleep and snored ALL NIGHT LONG. A train official even came by at one point and asked the guy to change positions so he didn’t snore; that worked for all of 30 minutes, until the loud @#$%er started again. It wasn’t even the “white noise” kind of snoring; it was the kind where you know he has sleep apnea, stops breathing, and then lets out a giantly loud snort (sounding kinda like Homer Simpson when he takes a bite of a donut or hamburger) … every 10-30 seconds. Ugh. Ahh well, we managed to get some hours of sleep here and there, and made it to Sydney in no time. Thankfully, the train station ended up being right across from our hostel … and when we checked into our hostel at 7am, they randomly had our room ready for us, so we were able to grab a quick nap before we hit the city.
The hostel is actually pretty cool. It’s a bit on the young side (clientele wise), but it’s pretty “chic.” Lots of colors and modern decor, and they do a good job trying to be trendy. There’s a nice wide open lounge area when you walk in, and they have a big flat screen playing the news. There’s a café attached to the hostel which serves really cheap (and pretty delicious) meals, and they even have a bar with $3.50 beers from 8pm-9pm. Wicked deal.
After our three hour nap, we got up to catch a free city tour operated by the hostel. It took us to all the places we wanted to visit in the city, and it included a free beer at the end as well! Deal! We started off just walking the streets, and eventually made our way to Darling Harbour. The city is pretty much just a city, so not worth talking about too much, but it is cool being in another big city where people have strange accents.
Once we got to Darling Harbour, we broke away for lunch, and that’s where Jess and I lost the group. Doh! Not a big deal; we managed to finish the tour on our own. We stopped by the Opera House … amazing to see because it’s the Sydney Opera House, but to be honest, that’s really the height of the amazement, ha. It’s not as white as the pictures, and … well … it’s an opera house. Neither of us are into opera, so it wasn’t worth catching a show --- just snapped a few pics and headed onwards. We almost did a ferry cruise of the harbor, but at that time, it was getting rainy and we were hoping to do the cruise in better weather. So … what do you do in a city when it’s raining? … you go shopping, I guess. Hah --- Jess made sure to point us in the right direction of the big mall we walked through on our walking tour.
The mall was quite different than any other mall --- lots of diagonal hallways, forks in the road, tiny ceilings, etc. Oh, and about two dozen shoe stores, all of which we stopped in. Hah. It was fun, but tiring. After a couple hours, we relaxed on a Starbucks couch with a couple coffees.
On our way back to the hostel, we swung by Peterpans to get “almost done” with our traveling plans. Then we made it back to our hostel (walking past an angry probably-schizophrenic old man) around 7:30pm. We grabbed a delicious $21 dinner, and then $3.50 happy hour beers until we were all tuckered out around 10pm. There was a bit of an issue with getting the bill sorted out with the drinks. Long story short, when I gave them my card to pay for drinks, I told them to keep it open to which they responded it’s a $30 minimum. To me, that means that if I’m going to close out on my card, I need to spend $30, otherwise pay cash. To them, that meant that regardless of how many drinks we bought, they were going to charge us a minimum of $30. The guy was a real dick about it, but he eventually let us pay cash (only $21.30), and we were good to go.
Today we were supposed to head out to the beaches and have a lovely beach day. Unfortunately, it’s raining like crazy (today and tomorrow), but it’ll clear up on Thurs and Fri, so we’ll be sure to catch some nice sand and surf at Bondi beach before we’re done here. Instead, we spent our entire morning at Peterpan getting all the travel finalized (now, with tickets in hand, we never have to go back there again!), and then grabbed a lunch at the hostel, and are finishing up chatting with Jess’s parents (I think they’re reviewing bungee jumping pictures right now, hah). We’ll soon be on our way … probably back to shopping but maybe to a zoo or something.
