Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Sydney the friendly giant
Sydney is a big place. We we have been here for 4 days and have barely scratched the surface. When we arrived, we had booked our accomodation for 7 days and discussed shortening our stay here in favour of spending more of our remaining 2 weeks elsewhere in Oz. In the end we decided to go with our original plan and I'm glad we did - Sydney is a fascinating city.
There is lots of old city to explore and even many new business areas with sky scrapers have the feel of the old city. This has been accomplished by keeping the facades of many old buildings and placing the taller new buildings back from the facade so the streets don't seem as cavernous.
Of course, we have seen the Sydney Opera House, and yes I took a bunch of photos - how could I not? Also the Sydney Harbour bridge and combinations of the two. They're icons and they just have to be in the photo file. I also took pictures of large bats haning fro trees at the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. I have to go back for a video, the noise they make is amazing.
The main downside of Sydney is: it's expensive. Unexpectedly, one of the most expensive things (given the amount we tend to consume) is beer. Barry is having a major crisis - he has calculated that beer is more expensive than wine! Oh well, in 2 weeks (more or less) we'll all be back to familiar surroundings (and costs).
Sydney has a monorail that travels around the major tourist area near Darling Harbour (our area) and part of downtown. When we went out for supper last night we decided to try the monorail. We got on the train and did a complete circuit of the track before getting off at the station closest to our destination (it was not very close). The trip was mildly interesting, offering a different view of where we had previously walked. It was definitely not rapid transit though, in fact Maureen called it vapid transit. I guess that's a mom joke. We could have walked to the get off point in about the same time we spent on the monorail.
Today, M&B had a together day and I did my thing. In retrospect I'm surprised there hasn't been one of those days sooner. This has been the longest time I can recall M and I have been together since we were living in Noranda. We probably should have had more days apart, although I've been fine with how things have been going - only minor occasional snips.
We will be staying here till Sunday and then leaving for Canberra. Originally I had thought we'd just do the Blue Mountains, but M&B want to see Canberra. I have to admit it does look interesting from a map view. It'll be the only formally planned city I've ever visited. There'll be lots of galleries and museums (musea?). We'll have 2 days in Canberra and 2 days in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. We had wanted to spend 3 days in the mountains, but the last day is the day before easter and we couldn't get accomodation.
This blog has turned into boring drivel, even I'm falling asleep writing it. Also, I want to go have one of those expensive beers and then some Vietnamese for supper. I'm in Chinatown (I think). There are orientals everywhere here. The computer I'm using brings up all it's prompts in chinese (or Japanese) all I can hear around me at other computers is chinese.
Bye for now.
There is lots of old city to explore and even many new business areas with sky scrapers have the feel of the old city. This has been accomplished by keeping the facades of many old buildings and placing the taller new buildings back from the facade so the streets don't seem as cavernous.
Of course, we have seen the Sydney Opera House, and yes I took a bunch of photos - how could I not? Also the Sydney Harbour bridge and combinations of the two. They're icons and they just have to be in the photo file. I also took pictures of large bats haning fro trees at the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. I have to go back for a video, the noise they make is amazing.
The main downside of Sydney is: it's expensive. Unexpectedly, one of the most expensive things (given the amount we tend to consume) is beer. Barry is having a major crisis - he has calculated that beer is more expensive than wine! Oh well, in 2 weeks (more or less) we'll all be back to familiar surroundings (and costs).
Sydney has a monorail that travels around the major tourist area near Darling Harbour (our area) and part of downtown. When we went out for supper last night we decided to try the monorail. We got on the train and did a complete circuit of the track before getting off at the station closest to our destination (it was not very close). The trip was mildly interesting, offering a different view of where we had previously walked. It was definitely not rapid transit though, in fact Maureen called it vapid transit. I guess that's a mom joke. We could have walked to the get off point in about the same time we spent on the monorail.
Today, M&B had a together day and I did my thing. In retrospect I'm surprised there hasn't been one of those days sooner. This has been the longest time I can recall M and I have been together since we were living in Noranda. We probably should have had more days apart, although I've been fine with how things have been going - only minor occasional snips.
We will be staying here till Sunday and then leaving for Canberra. Originally I had thought we'd just do the Blue Mountains, but M&B want to see Canberra. I have to admit it does look interesting from a map view. It'll be the only formally planned city I've ever visited. There'll be lots of galleries and museums (musea?). We'll have 2 days in Canberra and 2 days in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. We had wanted to spend 3 days in the mountains, but the last day is the day before easter and we couldn't get accomodation.
This blog has turned into boring drivel, even I'm falling asleep writing it. Also, I want to go have one of those expensive beers and then some Vietnamese for supper. I'm in Chinatown (I think). There are orientals everywhere here. The computer I'm using brings up all it's prompts in chinese (or Japanese) all I can hear around me at other computers is chinese.
Bye for now.
