It was a long day yesterday. I had to check out of my room by 10 and my bus didn’t leave until 8 that night. That left about 10 hours on Christmas day just to walk around and take in any sights that I may have missed the past four days.  Turns out that I’ve pretty much seen all of Sydney which means most of the ten hours was just walking around and dodging rain showers. That was okay until it started to rain heavily and there was no “dodging” any more. No worries though, it has been a long time since I’ve walked in the rain and it was kind of nice.

The bus left a little early and to make things even a little better, I had both seats to myself the whole journey to Melbourne. Considering how many times we stopped to let people on and off I feel pretty lucky.

It’s 10 am and I’m at my hotel in Melbourne right now and have just finished breakfast. I can’t check in until 2 this afternoon, so I’ll have to figure out what to do for next few hours. Although I’ve been through the city by bus and by train I don’t know what to expect before I go out again. There doesn’t seem to be very many people out on the streets though. I guess it could be that many, or most people have the week off.

Merry Christmas! I found out that there is a problem with the blog in that it won’t allow me to post photos. It would probably be an easy fix if I could find internet access somewhere. Australia has a lot going for it, but its access to the web is somewhat lacking. I even mentioned it to someone as I was booking a bus ticket the other day and they said I don’t even know how bad it actually is. I guess they pay twice as much with half the speed… if this guy was telling me the truth.

Since my last entry I’ve been walking all over the city as well as heading out to some of the nearby beaches. Yesterday I took a 30-minute bus ride to the “famous” Bondi beach. I’m not sure that I had heard of it before coming to Sydney, but according to the tourist brochures, it is “World Famous.” It is a beautiful beach with lots of beautiful people everywhere; I definitely felt a little self-conscience walking around with my belly. The reason I went though wasn’t to lay in the sun but to go for a coast walk that I read about. I don’t know the exact length, but I seem to remember reading 10 km somewhere. I decided to walk the walk, there and back, for a total of 20 km. I enjoyed myself enough that I decided to try to walk back to the city, probably another 20 km from Bondi Beach. Unfortunately, by the time I got back to the starting point I was feeling a little sore and wimped out and took the bus.

A couple of days ago I did a great tour of the city. It was one of the free tours that are common in some of the bigger cities. They’re considered free except you are expected to tip the guide when it’s over. The tour lasted about 4 hours and took us all over the city I felt that I learned more about Sydney in those four hours than I have the rest of the time that I’ve been here. Afterwards I decided to walk up to the harbor bridge to get a few more photographs of the opera house. I don’t think it’s possible for me to take a new photo of the opera house anymore. I’ve probably take 200 since I’ve been here and except for it being very iconic, it’s pretty boring now.

It’s been raining here from about 10 last night. It’s been coming down hard at times and just drizzling other times. I can say that this will probably be the last time I listen to anyone about a location again. Before I left I was told that it was going to be hot, “…you do know that it’s summer there right now?” Which it has been far from hot. I would guess that it is warmer in Dubai than it has been in Sydney since I’ve been here. Maybe they just have cold summers.

Mon 24/12/12 17:46

Not too much to talk about today as I’ve been pretty much doing the same thing as I have been doing, walking around the city. I’ve gone to different harbors, seen some different sights, but all in all not much new to mention. Today, I’m going to be going on a tour of the Sydney. It starts in about an hour and although I’m not expecting anything to be overwhelmingly interesting, I do think it will be nice to be walked around the city.

This jetlag is really becoming a nuisance though. Got up at 1 yesterday, got up at 11 today, and hopefully I’ll be back to normal by tomorrow. There are a few things that I want to do that will take most of the day so each one kind of requires that I’m up and out the door early. Around Sydney there are several beach paths that range from 5 to 10 km and each sound like they’d be a lot of fun, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to start late in the day… who knows though, it may be my only opportunity if the jetlag doesn’t subside.

I landed to an overcast sky at Sydney international at about 9am, said goodbye to Roosha (sp) and headed to customs. I’d been somewhat wary of the Australian customs for some while, the reason for my nervousness isn’t clear, but I could just feel my heart rate start to increase as I was in the line. Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t “nervous” since I knew that I had done nothing wrong and had nothing to worry about, but I just was a little “tense” as I moved forward. I get up to the passport control and the guy looks at my passport, runs it through the computer and then writes a big “A” on my tourist card and then told me that I’m going to have to have someone else look at it. A woman comes over, takes my passport and leads me to another desk. About 5 minutes later I’m back on my way to customs. I’m queued up in front of the scanners when an officer asks me where I’m coming from and I tell him Dubai, and out of nowhere a different officer comes over and asks me to “please comer over here.” She was nice, and she just asked where I was going, why I was here, and a lot of other questions. She eventually scanned my luggage and thanked me.  I don’t know if I was receiving “special” treatment or just a victim of random checks, but all I know is that my spidey-sense seems to be working quite well.

I got to my hotel at about 1, and decided to head out to get a feel for Sydney. I took a charter bus from the airport which dropped me off directly at the hotel. In the course of taking the other passengers to their hotels I was beginning to feel like I understood Sydney a little. It’s not bad. It’s big, but I don’t really get a feeling that it is too big. The architecture seems very much the way I remember Portland, Oregon. There is a mix of older and newer buildings, the older being from the late 1800’s and the majority from the seventies and eighties.  The streets are laid out in such a way that it’s kind of hard to get lost—always a good thing for me.

My first goal was the opera house. I made it pretty quickly to the harbor and snapped lots of photos of the bridge and opera. I noticed that there is a party atmosphere to the harbor area. It seems that every bar is full of people all having a blast, (and when I think of it, all of Sydney seems to be that way) lots of tourists and lots of natives.

My next trip was to head to take a ferry to one of the cities around the area. I didn’t know which one to take so I decided on Manly City. It was pretty cool, the ferry wasn’t crowded and it was about an hour ride. It appears, at least where I went in Manly that it is a tourist area. Everything was clean, the people were beautiful, there were lots of souvenir shops, it is nestled on a beautiful white beach, and it was very, very expensive; $17 for a shwarma, $50 for a pair of flip-flops, and the best I saw was $6.50 for a 500 ml soda. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful little town.

After walking around for a while I headed back to Sydney and eventually to my hotel room. I was so tired that I ended up falling asleep on the ferry, repeatedly. I thought that I’d make an early day of it and get a fresh start in the morning. So after getting dinner, trying to find a wifi spot, and grabbing some snacks I got back to the hotel at around 6. Unfortunately I was not able to fall asleep and ended up staying awake until about 4 am.

My next portion of the trip is planned. I’m heading down to Melbourne on Christmas day and from there I’ll decide what to do next. I really wanted to go to The Great Barrier Reef, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing that for some time. It’s just too expensive, too far, and too few options for me to feel comfortable having my vacation dependent on being there.

It’s starting to get “real” that I’m actually going to be heading to Australia in about three weeks. Up until tonight it has just been something that I knew was coming, something in the future, but tonight I made my first hotel reservation while in Sydney, and now the trip seems real. I still don’t know where I’m going to visit except for Sydney for at least three days, after that it’s either north to Brisbane or south to Melbourne.  Brisbane is the best place to access The Great Barrier Reef, while Melbourne is the best city-scene. Brisbane’s a little further away but it may be worth it to do some snorkeling. I still have reservations about traveling during the holidays, but what can I do?

One of the great things about being a professor is the amount of time that I have off during the year, and with the upcoming break I’ll have more than two weeks to get lost somewhere in the world. This year it’s going to be Australia.

I’ve got mixed emotions about traveling down under though. The main reason is that I usually like a “culture shock” when I travel and I’m pretty sure I won’t get that during this trip. It will be fun, and I’m definitely looking forward to it, but it will most likely be more of a “got to see it” vacation.

The basic itinerary for the adventure is to fly into Sydney (already have my tickets) and make my way up the coast to the Gold Coast known for being at the Great Barrier Reef, if I understand it correctly. I expect about three days in Sydney, and hopefully four days in the Gold Coast. With travel that makes nine days, the remaining time will be doing whatever I want, even it that just means vegging on the beach.