You know you are becoming a seasoned traveler when:
1. No toilet, faucet, or shower system phases you and you figure out how to flush or turn it on in seconds.
2. You are amazed at how easy it is to traverse a land that speaks English as its main language.
3. Ladies – you are very poised at hovering over the toilet with a thirty pound backpack, purse, camera, and sweatshirt hanging off your shoulders.
4. Between 7:05 and 9:05 am our plane touched down, we collected our bags, legally entered Australia, navigated customs, declared our beef jerkey and saw it destroyed, hit up the ATM for aussie dollars, got a city map, bought a train ticket, took a thirty minute train ride at rush hour, walked fifteen minutes through the city to get to our hotel, dropped our bags off so the hotel would “mind” them, changed and freshened up, and made it four blocks down the road and were sitting in a café waiting for our lattes and omlets, all within two hours.
Okay, so after all of the events mentioned above in #4 – and yes, they did take our beef jerkey to be destroyed (but only after Daniel opened the bag and shoved a whole handful of jerkey in his mouth…, we found ourselves in Sydney! As we left the train station (which is essentially a subway) at Circle Quay (pronounced Circle “Key”) we caught our first glimpse of the Opera House and then the bridge!
In terms of location, our hotel is absolutely perfect. We are staying at Lord Nelson’s Brewery Hotel which triples as a bar on the first floor, a brasserie (restaurant) on the second floor, and hotel on the third and fourth floors. We have a snazzy side entrance that allows us to enter from a side street too. The beer is excellent, the continental breakfast is yummy, the people are super nice, and the location is superb. We’re a five to ten minute walk (without luggage) to “The Rocks” and the main strip of the Sydney Harbor, five minutes from the bridge, and twenty minutes from the city centre, Darlington Harbor, etc. Our walk home from the Opera House last night took fifteen minutes – including a stop for fantastic ice cream.
Funny side note: when I was emailing back and forth with them to set things up I kept receiving emails from “the Lord”).
So, we arrived in Sydney, but as we dropped off our bags and set out to explore the city it started pouring a cold, heavy rain and the woman at the bar actually took some of the chairs off of the tables so we could wait out the worst of it (the bar wasn’t running at 8 am) and loaned us umbrellas to use for the day – nice service!
We meandered through town and worked our way to the Sydney Aquarium…time for Beth to do her homework and freshen up on some of the fishies she might see in a few days… and enjoyed the “floating exhibits” of the aquarium – there are floating salt water tanks (that are buildings floating in the harbor, connected by covered walkways to the aquarium). The floating exhibits are tunnel exhibitions full of sharks, rays, turtles and dugongs (which are manatee wannabes) and are a lot of fun to walk through and see all the creatures swimming above and all around.
Our first day was a rough one. We arrived in Sydney sleep deprived and discombobulated, but Daniel had a much more difficult time of it than me. I was better at sticking to the “strategy” and forcing myself to stay up late and sleep at certain times. Daniel was exhausted and made it through the aquarium, but was essentially toast after that.
After visiting the aquarium, we headed back to the hotel to check in and shower for the first time in nearly 40 or so hours. While I was showering Daniel fell asleep – big mistake. I dragged him out once I was ready and we grabbed dinner, but he high-tailed it back to the hotel and then slept from 6 pm to 7:30 am…impressive. I didn’t do much better…I made it to 7 pm and then passed out cold until 7 the next morning.
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