Bumming around Sydney

June 10, 2008

Mom and my step-dad Val were planning to join me for the Australia portion of my trip, and I was really looking forward to seeing them. I got to Sydney a couple of days before they were scheduled to arrive, and spent a bit of time shopping and finding my way around. I got a couple of new shirts, and Mom brought me a few things, so I was able to bid a not-so-fond farewell to a few of the clothes I’d been living in for the last few months.

It was raining one day, so I ended up having a drink at the Opera Bar with a great view of the Harbor Bridge while a waited for it to stop. Rain isn’t always such a hardship. I did buy an umbrella on the way home that night, which of course I haven’t used since. It’s a nice small one, so I’m keeping it.

Mom and Val got in early in the morning after a direct flight from San Francisco, and I went out to the airport to meet them. We went back to the guesthouse so they could check in and drop off their bags, and then I took them down to the CBD (Central Business District) to see some of the sights. The goal was to get out in the fresh air and walk around until it was somewhat close to local bedtime, to start getting adjusted to the time change. They made it until 8:00pm, so they did pretty good.

We spent a bit of time the next day doing some more planning, then went out to see the town again. The guesthouse was right on a bus line that went into the city, so it was quite easy to get back and forth. The downtown hotels would have been twice the cost. I’ve definitely been going through some sticker shock in Australia. The weak US dollar really shows here. The Australian dollar is currently worth about 96 cents, and a couple of years ago it was around 70 cents. If the value of the dollar was still at that level, things wouldn’t have seemed to expensive, but at the current value, prices were quite high.

There are two options for climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge. You can do a climb with an outfit called Bridgeclimb that lets you climb up the actual arch of the bridge. People have to wear special suits when they do the climb, so they don’t drop things out of their pockets onto the cars driving below them. Or, you can climb up to the top of one of the pylons at the end of the bridge. The Bridgeclimb is $199, and the pylon climb is $9, so we opted for the pylon. The views were still spectacular, and we good a good look at people doing the Bridgeclimb.

We also did a sunset cruise on the Sydney harbor. The harbor is famous, but I didn’t really appreciate how big it is until I saw it. Ferries are still used to get around the harbor.

We took the ferry over to Manly Beach, one of the famous Sydney beaches, and watched all the activity. There were some young surfers out there, and lots of people just enjoy the sun. There weren’t very many swimmers, since it’s late fall in Sydney, and the weather was a bit cool for swimming.

I was coming down with a cold, so I took a day off on our last full day there, while Mom and Val went out for the day. They managed to have a good time without me :). I had arranged to meet Craig and Aphra, from the India tour, for dinner that night. It was great to catch up with them, and find out some of the local customs. For example, in most restaurants that don’t have a liquor license, you can bring your own beer or wine along to have with your meal.

The next day, we picked up our first rental car, and set off to see the Blue Mountains. We’d been flirting with the idea of going to Tasmania instead, when we found cheap airfares there, but when we went back to buy the tickets, the price had doubled, so we went back to the original plan. I’d arranged to pick up the car at a downtown rental place, so we could get to it easily and not have to pay the extra airport fees, and realized too late that it meant starting out driving on the left through busy city traffic. I’d driven on the left once before, so I was nominated to get us out of the city. We hoped that people understood that when the windshield wipers went on it meant I was about to turn. I was concentrating on what lane to be in, but the turn signal and windshield wipers were also reversed, and that I don’t tend to think about, and kept hitting the wrong one. We made it out of the city in one piece, anyhow.

Posted in Australia