Sydney

Hey all!

It's been awhile, but I've been adventuring.  Dani, Susan and I embarked on a 10 day journey up and down eastern Australia!  We traveled by airplane, train, bus, car, monorail, sailboat, ferry, taxi and our own feet to see this beautiful country.  For the sake of keeping these posts readable, I'll break down the trip into three chunks, beginning with Sydney.

Day 1

ANZAC Memorial

We woke up at a brisk 4 am to catch a cab at 5 for our flight at 6:30.  Needless to say we took a nap on the airplane.  We landed, took a quick train ride over to the hostel, which was near the heart of downtown Sydney.  We dropped off our stuff and began exploring the city.

With weather in the high 20's (thats low 80's for my Fahrenheit friends) we had a beautiful day at our expense.  We walked to Darling Harbour, which does justice to its name.  It was really cute, with many fountains and a shopping center on the waterfront.  My favorite part was the monorail which travels in a loop from the city center to the harbor.  It's the first time I've seen a monorail outside of Disney World.  I was quite excited to give it a ride.

Fountains of Darling Harbour

After some lunch the girls took an afternoon nap, but I decided to go for a walk to Hyde Park and see the ANZAC memorial.  It's a beautiful park, and was well worth the 45 minute walk.  After Dani and Susan woke up, we trekked up to the Sydney Tower to get some cool views of the city.  That night we met one of Susan's friends from U Texas, Matt, who is studying in the University of New South Wales.  He took us to a bar called "Marble Bar" where we enjoyed each others' company and listened to some live music.  The bar is completely made of marble... it was really cool.

Day 2

Hyde Park

Day two began with a trip to Sydney's botanical gardens next to its famous opera house.  In the gardens we got some wonderful views of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  It was truly a magnificent site.  The opera house is really a quite unique structure;  I've never seen anything quite like it before.

Dani, Susan and Me in the Gardens

We spent the morning in the gardens and headed over to the opera house for some tourist photos.  After getting our fill, we made our way down to the Circular Quay, which is the original landing place of the convict ships sent from England just over 200 years ago.  From there we took a ferry over to Manly Beach, which gave us some wonderful views of the harbor.  We got some relaxing beach time in and met with some friends from Melbourne.  They are also exchange students from Boston College.  After we headed back, we were just exhausted and spent the night at our hostel.

Day 3

Sydney Tower

Our final day in Sydney was not nearly as pleasant as the weather turned to heavy rain and chilly winds.  However, we met a German kid in our hostel named Ludwig who is taking a gap year before he goes to college.  We invited him to join us for the day.  We made our way to the Paddy Markets for some cheap shopping.

We visited Darling Harbour once again, but this time there was a circus going on around the harbor.  We saw some cool acrobats and a couple clowns.  However, we wanted to get back to the Opera house to take a tour, but by the time we got there it was too late to book one for the day.

Monorail!

Instead we made our way over to The Rocks, the original part of Sydney.  It reminded me much of Boston, with small alleys cutting up a sharp rock face right next to the Harbour Bridge.  From there we met up with some of my friends Simon and Eva, who were both at U of Illinois my freshman year.  Simon's an Australian native who studied abroad at U of I while Eva is an Illini who is studying abroad at UNSW.  It was wonderful to catch up and see some old friends!  That night we spent getting to know our roommates in the hostel (there were 10 people per room).  It was good to meet some other nationalities, namely British and Scottish citizens.

The next day I found an Anglican church to celebrate Easter.  It was a good way to end our time at Sydney.  I enjoyed the city, but I'm still partial to good old Melbourne!  Next I'll tell you about our adventures in Cairns!  Stay tuned!

No explanation needed

Cheers,
Paul