Sydney, Australia

We landed at about 10am, went through customs, picked up our luggage, and went through customs a second time with our baggage! I had taken a picture of Caytie with all our luggage piled on the cart, and when we got to the second customs checkpoint, I was asked if I had taken any pictures and I told the guy yes, and he asked me to erase it! Once outside the customs area, I retook the picture because it is kind of funny how much luggage we had! Caytie had a large suitcase, a cooler, and a small suitcase; I had a large suitcase, a small suitcase, and Uchoti’s large suitcase. We got in line for a taxi, and we were told we needed to got to the “left” for the larger taxis…we had too much luggage to get into a regular cab!

We got to the Y-Hotel Hyde Park at about 11am, but check-in wasn’t until 2pm, so we left our luggage in a locked room they have and headed out to walk around for a while.

We went to Hyde Park first and visited the war memorial there, which was beautiful! Hyde Park is two blocks long and a block wide. We walked down to the fountain in the middle of the park.

It was really beautiful, but I kept feeling like I was in a Southern California town! The vegetation in Sydney was very California-esque!

We walked down another block to St. Mary’s Cathedral, which was beautiful. We couldn’t take pictures inside, but it had beautiful woodwork and awesome marble statues. There was also a crypt, but it is only open on Fridays for a tour. We left the cathedral and headed back up towards our hotel, and walked past it and found a Subway. We ate lunch there, and got our first glance of how much food was going to cost us! The cheapest sub (foot long) was $7, and that was without chips or a soda! A bottle of Diet Coke was $3. We decided to eat half for lunch that day, and then the other half the next day. One thing I like that they do in Australia is that the price you see is the price you pay; tax is already included!

We got into our hotel and hit the showers first thing! Once we were changed and all fresh and clean, we headed back out to go see Sydney’s Olympic Park (2000). We had the CityLink (subway) map in hand, and Museum station was just around the corner from our hotel. We purchased our tickets to get on the Bankstown line to go to Lindcombe station where we would catch the Olympic Park subway train. There was a slight problem! We got our tickets fine, and got down to the correct track, but we got on the first train that came along, and it wasn’t the Bankstown line. We had taken the Airport and East Hills Line, got out at Wolli. We took the Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra Line to Sydenham, got on the Bankstown line to go to Lindcombe. Our next problem was the line ended at Bankstown, before Lindcombe. So we pulled out our trusty map to figure out what the heck went wrong. Some nice CityLink worker noticed our confusion and came over to ask where we were headed. We told him Lindcombe to Olympic Park. He told us that Lindcombe and Olympic Park tracks were closed for construction. He told us to catch the bus right outside to get to Lindcombe and then catch another bus to get to Olympic Park.

We caught the Lindcombe bus easily enough, but we had no idea where we were going and where to get off! At one point, Caytie and I were the only ones on the bus. We had no problem picking out the stop, and we got off at Lindcombe, walked up the hill past the station to see if we could see Olympic Park and walk there. We saw nothing. So, we found the buses that were being used instead of the CityLink train and caught the bus out to Olympic Park. We rode around the park on the bus and it stopped and dropped us off about a block from the ANZ Stadium.

As Caytie and I walked down to the stadium, a few hundred people got off at the CityLink Olympic Park station. They were there for a Metallica concert! The stadium was adjacent to the Cathy Freeman Park (lit the Olympic Flame in the Cauldren to open Sydney Olympics and first Aboriginal athlete to win an individual gold medal). Across the park, the Cauldron still stands, with water still pouring from it! It was kind of cool, because coming out in lines from the Cauldron at various angles are the gold, silver, and bonze medalists, including the medalists for the Special Olympics.

It started to sprinkle as we walked back from the Cauldron to the ANZ Stadium. Next to the stadium are small pillars standing at various heights; the pillars have the names of every Olympian from the 2000 Olympics and Special Olympics. It was starting to rain harder, so we decided to head back to catch the bus back to Lindcombe. Once we got back to Lindcombe station, we found out that there were free buses for the CityLink that stopped at all the stations on the Bankstown line! We caught that bus and got off the bus at Bankstown and caught the CityLink train back to Museum station.

Caytie and I walked down the hill from the station to the VIP Lounge we had seen earlier and stepped in for dinner. I had a steak sandwich, fries, and water…yum! Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel to get to bed. It was a Saturday night in downtown Sydney…it was crazy loud! There were police and ambulance sirens going off, and people talking everywhere on the streets. Even with all the noise, I slept really well. We woke up the next morning at 6am in order to get breakfast (continental provided) and catch the city’s free tourist bus and head down to Circular Quay (said “key”) to get the Hop-on Hop-off cruise around Sydney Harbour.

We waited for what seemed like hours, but the free bus finally came and we headed to the harbour. We walked down the waterfront to Jetty 6 to purchase our tickets and catch our boat. Caytie and I decided to take the full 1 ½ hour round-trip tour of Sydney Harbour, and then decide from there where we wanted to get off and explore. We knew we wanted to end the day at the Circular Quay because the opera house and Royal Botanic Gardens were only a few blocks from the piers.

We decided to go to Watson’s Bay to eat our lunch (Subway leftovers) and then to hike to the tip of the hill and look over the cliffs to the ocean. The view was beautiful…looking from the top of the hill towards Sydney (across the harbour) was the city sprawled over the hills around the harbour, and the other direction was the endless ocean.

At the top of the hill on a short hike we took were large round cement bases with a pin of some sort in the center, with little “dens” at the back. We figured they had been put there during WWII for heavy artillery and as lookouts for Japanese ships.

We got back on the boat, and went back to Circular Quay to walk to the Opera House and the Royal Botanic Gardens. The Opera House is pretty cool looking, but up close it is less attractive. Up close, the tiles have an opal-like shimmer/sheen which makes it look pretty neat. We continued walking around Farm Cove and through the Royal Botanic Gardens, our aim to go see Mrs. Macquaries’ Chair.

One of the early governors of Australia carved a bench-like seat out of the sandstone rock near a point of land on the harbour giving a view of the water for the governor’s wife.

As we walked along, we went through the gardens, and one particular tree had beautiful purple flowers that we learned only flowered in November (perfect timing for us)! We had dinner on the waterfront at a little café, and then headed back to our hotel. Although I had put on sunscreen first thing in the morning, and then twice more throughout the day, I got very, very burnt! The worst was my forehead and the back of my hands.