Hannah and me, smiling rather manically.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
After a relatively painless flight to Sydney (and a very painful lunch of airline beans and rice), I took the train to my hostel, the Mcleay Lodge. When I booked the hostel in August, I unwittingly managed to land myself about two blocks up from Sydney's infamous Darlinghurst Rd, the red light district. Had I been in the market for heroin or hookers, I'd have been in business. That said, Pott's Point (where I was) is a bit quieter, and sort of how I'd imaging the Village in the early eighties. Lots of young, gay people and a few trendy shops and cafés beginning to pop up.
I didn't do much Friday evening, but I did go out to explore the "Markets by Moonlight" at the Rocks, Sydney's oldest neighborhood. There was live music there, although I wasn't crazy about it, but it was fun to walk around and look at Sydney Harbor, and eat some mysterious street vendor food.
Saturday I went on Alice's Whirlwind Walking Tour of Sydney. I started out walking to Paddington, which is the trendy fashion district. I looked in some of the cool shops on Oxford Street and then checked out the Paddington Market, which was fun. Lots of neat things by local artists and jewelers, and not really very touristy. Then I walked all the way up to College Street, which was an interesting walk, and stopped at the Australian Museum. The Australian Museum is pretty good, and is sort of a cross between culture and natural history (with an emphasis on all things Australian, of course). Spent a few good hours there, before walking up to the Royal Botanical Gardens. At this point, I realized that I was going to pass out on the pavement if I didn't eat something right away. So, I stopped at a little outdoor café right outside the garden gates and had a piece of quiche and a ginger beer. Australia markets several brands of ginger beer, Bundaberg being the most common. I will miss this.
Anyway, the Botanical Gardens were in their full, early-summer glory. The rose garden, which is extensive, was in full bloom with hundreds of different kinds of roses. And there were day-lilies and all manner of other plantings, both native and introduced. The trees were also interesting––bunya pines next to palm trees next to wattles… you get the idea. At this point, around six-thirty, I was so tired that I walked back to the hostel (at least another fifty minutes of walking), got some take-out Indian food, and fell asleep.
On Sunday, I decided to give my poor feet a bit of a break and take the train back to the Rocks. However, the travel gods were not on my side and King's Cross station wasn't running any trains that day. All of the train routes from that station were being covered by buses, though, so after a bit of figuring things out I managed to get to the Rocks. I walked around in the big Rocks Market in the morning, and then wandered around until I found the entrance onto the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I should note that you can see both the Bridge and the Sydney Opera House from the Rocks. I decided to start walking across the bridge to see the view, and ended up crossing the whole thing (which is quite a long way, actually, and there's no shade). Got a lovely view of the city and the Harbor, with all of the sailboats and cargo ships and cruise liners and jetboats. And on the other end of the bridge I found… another market! Apparently Sydney is big on markets. Who knew? So I walked around there for just a few minutes, and then got some falafel for lunch. Eventually I wandered back over the Bridge and to the Opera House.
As much as I have tried to leave her out of this narrative, it seems negligent of me not to mention that Oprah Winfrey was visiting Sydney at the same time I was. This is significant to me only because of the occasional hassles it caused and the constant embarrassment of middle-aged American housewives along for her tour, occasionally sporting white plastic top hats and bright yellow shirts. I was inclined to begin pretending to be Canadian, if only to stop people asking if I was here with bloody Oprah.
But I digress. The Opera House is really cool from the outside, but I wasn't that impressed with the inside (mostly beige composite blocks) until I got to the concert hall. However, I went there in the first place because I wanted to get a ticket to Handel's Messiah. I got the second-to-last one, actually, and the lovely people at the Opera House give nearly a fifty percent discount to students. The concert didn't start until five, though, so I went to the Rocks Museum, which is very small, and poked my rather large nose around there for about an hour. Then I went back to the Opera House, looking like most of a bum, and went to the concert hall. The concert hall is, architecturally, an acoustic masterpiece. I don't think I've ever been in a room with such well-thought-out acoustics. It's also much more attractive than the beige blocks, although someone got the bright idea to put bright pink upholstery on all of the seats. Also, to the architect's credit, all of the seats (even the crappy last-minute college student ones) have an excellent frontal view of the stage. The performance was incredible, and I was particularly impressed by the tenor and alto soloists. And the choir was huge; at least three hundred people. They were accompanied by the Sydney Philharmonic, which was also excellent. Unsurprisingly, I was sitting next to a German woman, and we got talking about music (she was a die-hard opera fan). And, rather more surprisingly, she invited me for a glass of chardonnay at intermission. So I had fun talking to her, and chatting to the woman from Sydney on my other side, whose elderly mother could recite almost every word of the Messiah, including the solos. It was a wonderful evening.
Monday, my last day in Sydney, I decided to take the train up into the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains get their name from the blue mist that hangs over them, which is caused by light reflecting off of tiny droplets of eucalyptus oil that hang around the trees. It's about a two hour train ride from Sydney, but the second half of the ride has beautiful scenery. I got to Katoomba, the end of the country line, and got on a red double-decker bus from London, circa 1970s, I would guess. Anyway, the deal with this bus was that you could get on and off whenever you wanted for the day. So I hopped off at Katoomba Falls, not really having any idea what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised, however, and found a beautiful hiking spot and amazing views of the highest waterfall I've ever seen. The whole area has sandstone (I think) and clay cliffs. The clay erodes easily, so huge chunks of rock break off and slide hundreds of metres down into the valley, creating very sheer drops. It's quite breathtaking, really. I took some photos, but you can't really capture the panorama very well. It ended up being rather a long hike down a few thousand very precipitous stone stairs, which would have scared my mother senseless.
At the bottom I saw a sign for a "scenic railway," that took you back to the top of the cliffs. I needed to get back up to get the bus, and I didn't fancy walking the whole hike again uphill. So, I hopped on. Whoops. This was, allegedly, the world's steepest rain line. The train was an open car with a cage over the top, but there wasn't really anything keeping you in the seats (like, say, seatbelts). Basically I was facing backwards and literally standing up as the train went up vertically. Slightly terrifying. Actually, it was rather enjoyable after the first minute or two (only about a ten-minute ride). But certainly not what I was expecting. Caught the bus to a town called Leura, where I spent just about half an hour before catching the train back to Sydney. I didn't really feel like going back to the hostel, though, so I checked out Darling Harbor, the rich and fancy bit of Sydney where there are nice parks and fancy restaurants. I walked around for awhile (there are amazing water features in the parks, by the way) and ended up eating at a pretty good restaurant called Blue Fish (not to be confused with bluefish, which I don’t believe live in the Pacific). I had Tasmanian salmon. Then I impulsively got a hazelnut ice cream cone and walked around to the train station, which was running again.
And that was it. Tuesday morning (weird to think that it is still Tuesday here in the States) I got up, got a pain au chocolat for the plane, and caught my shuttle to the airport. Nineteen or so hours later, I'm about half an hour from landing in NYC, and it is still Tuesday afternoon. This has been, quite literally, the longest day of my life.
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