Day 22-25 - Sydney

Day 23 - Sydney Harbour Daytime
Originally uploaded by photog larry.

We boarded the ferry and headed back to Hamilton Island for our flight out to Sydney. Our flight this time, was on discount airline Jetstar. Unfortunately, discount air means less perks, and apparently, lower baggage allowances. My bag, getting more and more stuffed with crap, ended up over by about 10lbs, meaning that I had to pay $100 if I wanted to see my stuff ever again. I reluctantly paid, and we were on our way. Stupid Jetstar.

Flight was uneventful. When we got to Sydney airport though, my baggage had disappeared. After all of that crap, and paying an extra $100, my baggage went missing. Had to sit around and fill out forms, and ranted on the dumb guy there, so our day was delayed by a bit. Stupid Jetstar.

After this fiasco, we decided to head to the airport train, that would take us into town. Stupid me, (I was on a roll today), I convinced Linda that we should only get the one way pass, and that we should take a cab back to the airport when we were leaving. This act of foolishness ended up costing big. More on that later.

Anyways, we headed onto the highly convenient train, which dropped us off about 1 block from the hotel we booked, the Westin Sydney. We decided to treat ourselves, given that we had stayed in hostels pretty much the whole way. We figured it would be a good way to end off the trip. Since we had points, and Linda had “gold” status from her work travels, we ended up with an upgraded room after check in. Room was huge, bathroom was huger. Complete extravagance.

We ended up walking around for a bit, and then met up with Kev and Caroline after they finished work. We ate at some thai place, with some insanely spicy food. I dug it. Linda liked it, but couldn’t handle the fire. Haha. After that, we decided to take the bus up to the harbour for our first look at the Opera House and world famous harbour front. It didn’t disappoint. We can only wish that the gov’t will spend some money on ours.

Next day took us to da beech. The problem was, which beach!?? Bondi is the more popular choice, so we decided on Manly. D Betts highly touted this as the best beach, so we decided to take it on his word. We got onto the very convenient ferry, and over to Manly beach. The area was pretty laid back, with typical surf shops lining the area. We took a walk along the coast, realizing that we wouldn’t really have time to lay back and relax. But we got our feel of it and took off.

Back to town in a race for Chinatown and the market. At this point, we hadn’t really gotten enough souvenirs to satisfy Linda, so in a panic, we got there as everything was closing. Unfortunately, it became very clear that everything there was crap. Though there were about a million different stands, they all sold EXACTLY the same stuff. Hardly any handmade crafts, just crappy “Australia” or “Sydney” labelled crap. Dissatisfied, we headed home to await dinner with my long lost cousin Rachel. Hadn’t seen my cousin since I was about 10 years old, so it was nice to catch up with her, meet her husband and two kids.

Its funny how most of the cousins in my generation are doing some form of business or finance. Was I meant to be an accountant? Is it in my genes? Nah. Couldn’t be. HML. No wait, still on vacation, can’t HML right now.

Anyways, we ate at this Spanish restaurant, that was playing live music that night. So we ended up sitting outside on their pseudo patio (meaning the sidewalk). The food was OK, but not great. Oh well, didn’t really matter, that wasn’t the point. We got some good recommendations on what to do the rest of the time there (which wasn’t much), and since the kids had to go to bed -

we went our separate ways. Hopefully, it won’t be another 19 years until I see my cuz again.

Night fell, and we decided to check out the other harbour, Darling Harbour. It was a pretty short walk – our map seemed to show that it was a long way away. Darling was nice, but clearly not Sydney Harbour. However, it happened to be convenient close to the Star City Casino….ding ding ding!

We agreed to head in for a short while. Went to the poker table, and the list was about a million players long. Of course, they only had about 4 tables in play, and about 20 empty ones. So I inquired about whether they would be opening another table. They said no. dumbasses.

After getting my souvenir players card, which came with a match play coupon, Linda and I decided to play a little roulette, which quickly became not fun and unexciting, except for the big shooter, coming to the $2 table and dropping $100 chips on #’s, losing and leaving.

Anyways, we gave up on that, and went to the blackjack table. As soon as I was dealt my first hand, I was called. So I took my $10 win, and left. The game they had going was $5/5 no-limit, with $1 rake PER HAND. What a rip off. So the house collects $10 per hand regardless of the pot. I basically waited and waited and waited, since I started short stacked. In the one hand I played, I had KK and was called all the way by some garbage hand, and doubled up. OK. Hour’s up, late, and time to go. But wait, where’s Linda? She was waiting around before, but decided to walk off. Oh shoot. Is she mad at me? Did I stay a bit too long? Yikes. I jumped from the table with my winnings, and went looking for her, finally running into her. She had been at the crappy souvenir gift shop. Not mad at me. Phew.

Next day was our final full day in Sydney. On Kev’s recommendation, we decided to hit the harbour and the Opera House during the daytime:

and then head to the Botanical Gardens. The what? OK, I don’t think either of us would naturally pick this spot as a place to check out, as we are not exactly horticulture freaks. In fact, I’m pretty much allergic to every plant alive. BUT, this botanical garden was the habitat for a colony of bats. So we went, and checked out the bats, pretty ugly and freaky.

Then, one last blitz of shopping, and a quick trip to the Rocks for dinner. We were supposed to meet up with Kev and Caroline that night, but Kev bailed out last minute. We later learned that this was because of he was to propose to Caroline the next day (congrats!), so all is forgiven.

Anyways, Linda and I enjoyed one last look at the harbour, and headed back to the Westin to pack up every piece of junk we had lugged around for 3 weeks.

Next day was an early day to get to the airport on time for our early flight of 9AM (since it was international, we figured we would have to be there at around 6). So we got there, and strangely, there was no check in for Toronto. Hmm, very strange. We got frustrated, and started to look around. On top of this, our flight didn’t seem to be appearing on the departures board. Could our flight have been cancelled? WTF? OK, recheck tickets. What? Yes, recheck our tickets. Oops. Flight is not til around noon. We’re 3 hours early. I read our flight time from LA to Toronto. Idiot idiot idiot.

So we passed the time with breakfast, duty free shopping, and the free internet at the kiosk. No huge deal, except for the fact that we gave up an additional 3 hours of sleep, and a few minutes of lost life due to stress.

The one good thing, was that we managed to snag an exit row on the long ride back. Not only would this give us first privilege to jump from a burning plane, but also gave us the opportunity to stretch our legs while we waited for said burning. Linda was seated beside some Aussie lady who was heading to LA to visit her boyfriend. Ironically, she kept talking and talking to Linda, and Linda couldn’t really get a word in. I didn’t really want to hear any of it, and bailed out on Linda, and closed my eyes, and went to bed.

The cabin seemed unusually cold, even with a blanket, I was freezing. Must have been because of the fact that we were near the exit door. Bad idea?

At one point, the flight attendant tripped and spilled water near the Aussie lady and Linda. Not on, but near. No big deal, they cleaned it up and were on their way. Finally, as our flight neared the end, after some dumb movies, and watching “Mythbusters” over and over, the flight attendant came over and gave the Aussie lady and Linda a bottle of champagne each, because of the inconvenience of the spilled water. Have I told you how I love Quantas? But wait. The Aussie Lady said she didn’t drink. So she gave us her bottle! Sweet. Two free bottles of bubbly for us. A wonderful capper to our great trip to the land of Oz.

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Just the pics? Head here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwswong/sets/72157594195182571/