Stranded in Sydney

And it’s been super sweet.  As Di mentioned earlier, we’ve decided to stop doing the tougher travelling to finish off our one year trip.  So after spending New Years in Taipei we took a look at an atlas and decided to head to Australia.  Just 4 months earlier my friend Mellissa in HK moved to Sydney so I quickly messaged her to see if she wanted visitors.  The good news was she was happy to have us, the bad news was she had to leave the day after we arrived to Perth for a wedding.  So for a couple of days we had her sweet pad to ourselves.  And it was a sweet pad, set in Neutral Bay (a really nice part of Sydney) with a great view of the water and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Having a place for ourselves with a kitchen inspired us to cook, and we made a couple of great meals at home for the first time in over 10 months.  Luckily my other friend I.G. is also living in Sydney, so he took us out for a night while Mellissa was gone.  Both IG and Mellissa lived in Vancouver and went to UBC with me.  IG also lived in Japan for a while before completing law school and now works as a lawyer here.  Mellissa has lived in the cream of the world’s city crop, with stints in London, New York and HK in the finance field.  Both are now total Sydney converts, and after spending a week here Di and I can see why.

Sydney could easily be Vancouver’s older, bigger sister.  We spent a few days walking around downtown and architecturally a lot of the city looks similar; in downtown alone there are tons of comparisons.  For example, Sydney Harbour Bridge looks like Burrard Bridge, the Rocks area is kind of like Gastown, Darling Harbour is kind of like Granville Island, and Chinatown is well, like Chinatown.  Neutral Bay, where we’re living, totally reminds me of Kitsilano.  There are a lot of inlets full of little sailboats just like in False Creek as well.  In addition, a ton of the girls are running around in lululemon pants!  We have not been in another country on our travels where lululemon is so prevalent.  Maybe women in the Middle East wore them under their burkas, but I doubt it.  Anyways, while exploring the city our first stop was obviously the Sydney opera house.  I really don’t have to describe that building as I’m sure it’s one of the most identifiable in the world (if you don’t know it, check the picture above, and try getting out of your house once in a while).  We were even able to catch a concert in there one afternoon.  It was a kind of ‘opera greatest hits’ concert that just started for the summer season.  Inside the opera house was a lot smaller than I expected, and the concert seemed to be more of a casual recital than a serious heavy opera performance but it was enjoyable.  I knew it was gonna be pretty chill when I asked the lady at the ticket counter if there was a dress code, and her response was that I had to wear a shirt.  I was wondering if she meant I had to wear a collared shirt, but what she meant was that I just couldn’t show up topless.  I guess I’ll have to check ‘going topless to the opera’ off the bucket list in another city…shucks.  The concert had only 6 performers: 2 sopranos, 3 tenors, and one funny guy on a Steinway who also acted as the host.  It was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  The rest of the time we’ve just been relaxing, walking around town, eating fresh Sydney fare and drinking copious amounts of great espresso and Australian wine out in the summer sun.  Speaking of espresso, the coffee is fantastic here, and though Vancouver has a dominant coffee culture, that dominance is spearheaded by Starbucks.  Sydney has a far greater number of independent cafes, with Starbucks only being seen in the touristy areas.  We haven’t had a bad latte yet at any of these independent cafes, which we really appreciate since most of the countries we’ve been to serve instant Nescafe as coffee (nasty!).  They also have their own terms here like ‘long black’ and ‘flat white’ for their coffee orders, kind of like our ‘double double’.  Though I might like the coffee scene here a hair more than Vancouver’s, the beach scene here is far, far superior to ours back home.  We spent a day at Manly beach and another at Bondi (pronounced Bondai not Bondee) and here’s where I got seriously jealous.  Their beaches have great waves and surf culture is really prevalent.  The swells were large on the 2 days we were on the beach, and signs were up everywhere to not swim in the ocean.  The surfers obviously didn’t care which was cool for us to watch.  I wanted to rent a longboard to catch the whitewash, but I didn’t want to be the only novice tool in the water so I stayed on the beach.  The day we spent at Manly rained a little so the crowds were more sparse but the beach was still stunning.  What was crazy at Manly was watching a few 8-10 year old kids go through lifeguard training, it was hardcore.  They were powerfully swimming through water that would have tossed me around like a ragdoll.  The day we spent at the world famous Bondi beach was sunny and it was gorgeous there.  Mellissa told us Bondi was where the beautiful people of Sydney strut their stuff, and I could totally see what she was talking about.  Literally.  Topless girls were everywhere!  I wouldn’t have placed an exclamation mark behind that sentence if I was writing about the beaches of the South of France but I had no idea they would be topless in Sydney.  Hence, the exclamation mark.  Actually, I just heard they were topless on Bondi, I was too busy staring into the eyes of my beautiful wife during the times I wasn’t watching the surfers ride to notice half naked women.  Seriously.  Oh I was reciting poetry while looking into her eyes as well.  Anyways, the beaches and the beach/surf scene blow Vancouver’s away.  And though we only went to 2 beaches, the city is littered with countless others mere minutes from each other.  Did I mention I was jealous?

Oh i haven’t explained why I titled this entry ‘Stranded’ in Sydney.  We are supposed to be in Brisbane right now, doing some sufing on the beaches of Gold Coast or in Surfer’s Paradise or in the town of Noosa.  After a few days of that we were going to head to Cairns so we could scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef.  Unfortunately, if you’ve been watching the news you’d know, the whole area is a disaster zone as it’s covered in floods.  So Di and I had to cancel our flights and reroute our itinerary in Australia.  We’ve finally figured it out, and the places we’re going to come highly recommended from our friends here.  So though they may not be as famous as the province of Queensland (where the floods are) we’re still looking forward to it.  However, we still have a couple days left in Sydney before our flight out…hope we can head to Bondi one more time, so I can, um, recite more poetry.