sunshine and rain

Friday in Sydney got off to a late start. After sleeping in, fighting wifi, washing laundry, and trying to plan out my remaining time in Australia, I'd burned through much of the day. Desperate to make the best of a nearly spent day, I headed out in the late afternoon to explore the city. Australian cities are famous for their frequent festivals and cultural celebrations, and I chanced into one going on in Hyde Park. Before I go on, I just want to point out how much I enjoy the fact that there is a Hyde Park in Sydney, a city that has gone to such lengths to replicate a classical English environment on the far side of the world the virtually every park, square, and civic construction is either named after a Royal Governor, or a preexisting park, square, or civic construction in London. Back to the cultural celebration, I quickly learned that it was just my luck to stop by a Thai Foods Festival, with loads of different booths selling the various culinary offerings of Thailand... for roughly five times the prices I'd gotten used to in Bangkok. Admittedly, even if the price was right, I needed a break from noodles, and so after looking around the city I made my way back to the hostel.

Sydney: a city on its way up.

I was reacquainted with my poker companions over a dinner of pasta and panini, and accepted an invitation to check out the night life Sydney had to offer on a Friday night. Of the half dozen of us that left the hostel, I was the only American, the rest of the gang being comprised entirely of Germans. As my German is restricted to the first verse of "Silent Night," and despite being a linguistic minority, the Germans graciously stuck to English while we explored the town. Our first stop was the aptly named Scruffy Murphy's, a rough-'round-the-edges Irish pub with live music blaring out from the mini-dance hall. After having my ID checked, I was subjected to the first metal-detecting pat-down I've ever experienced as a requirement for entry to a drinking establishment, and its necessity should have been a tip off to the character of the joint. After making it halfway through a cider I had ordered by accident, and had the barmaid turn the remains into a snakebite, which was a nice change of pace from the kinds of beverages I've been drinking in my travels. Ze Germans and I stuck around Scruffy Murphy's long enough to finish our drinks and listen to the music selection deteriorate into "the worst hits of the 70's" before we set off for our ultimate destination for the evening: the Ivy.

The Ivy is Sydney's current top-level exclusive dance club. Admission alone is $20 on Saturday nights, and combining that with a few drinks is enough to quickly bring you to a $100 night. But we weren't going on Saturday night, and so we managed to get through the the backdoor queue for free. The sound system, centered on the second floor of the four story structure, could be heard out in the street, but it would seem that this was just a marketing ploy, as inside the music level was more than reasonable, by club standards. Good songs at appropriate volume were matched by creative decor, and an open-air environment that helped to keep things cool. In fact, the only complaint I have to register about the Ivy is on that Friday night, it seemed as though most of Australia had managed to pack themselves into the second floor. To call the club "crowded" doesn't really capture the proximity with which people were forced to place themselves, which I would place somewhere between the Tokyo subway system at rush hour and the atomic structure of osmium, the densest element on the periodic table.

Looking up inside the Ivy.

I left the club sometime before 3:00, as it was around that time when I finally made it back to the hostel. I was just getting used to the feeling of my head of the pillow when I was jolted back into consciousness by an alarm going off in our room. My initial concern was that it was one of my alarms, but I quickly ascertained that it belonged to one of my bunkmates. My next move, after letting it go on for 30 seconds or so, was to get up and switch it off, but I was preempted in this endeavor by my more impassioned bunkmate from Liverpool. Rather than simply switching off the alarm, he punched the poor mechanism, and then proceeded to throw it violently across the room with a soft curse. I never did figure out for sure to whom the alarm belonged to, but I can promise you that it never bothered anyone again.

A bright and sunny Saturday morning greeted me when I awoke, and as soon as I finished breakfast, I made my way off to The Rocks. When the first settlers from Britain came to Australia - many of them in chains - it is likely that they first stepped off onto the rocky land plunging into Sydney Harbor in this less-than-creatively-named neighborhood. Where these British pioneers found strangled overgrowth and inhospitable crags, the modern visitor to The Rocks can indulge in boutique shops and some of Sydney's best restaurants. I was there enruite to the Harbor Bridge.

Purple flowering trees dotted The Rocks.

Before the Opera House was completed, the Harbor Bridge was Sydney's defining landmark: a massive steel structure spanning 3,770 feet and tall enough to allow a ten story building to pass underneath. When construction began in 1923, it was slated to be the longest single-arch spanning bridge in the world, but over its 10-year construction, a spanning bridge of similar design was quietly completed in New York, which took the title from the Harbor Bridge before it could even be completed by an understandably frustrating 26 inches. Nevertheless, it continues to dominate the harborscape, its twin Australian flags visible almost everywhere in the city.

The Harbor Bridge: helping to define the term "venerable."

The Opera House, reflected in a restaurant window.

The Saturday morning vibe was bright and cheerful, the melody of a jazz saxophone whined out as I made my way up and around the bridge, taking advantage of a soft-serve ice cream vendor parked along the harbor. A chocolate-dipped cone in hand, I sat on a park bench and watched as Sydneysiders, as they are fond of calling themselves, enjoyed the spring day. The Opera House seemed to be doing its best to draw my attention from the Harbor Bridge, reflecting the brilliant white sunlight from its interlocking sails. Equally impressive was a massive cruise ship moored in the harbor. I had initially assumed that the large white harborside building was an office building, or a ferry transportation hub, so it was quite shocking to discover propellers on the back of what I would later learn was the 951 foot Star Princess, a cruise ship of near-record-breaking size. In addition to long bridges and big ships, there were a plethora of street performers out and about, and as I traced the harbor boardwalk I saw everything from a man juggling a chainsaw to an aborigine's modern remix of didgery-doo music.

The designers of the Star Princess seem to have drawn artistic inspiration from the graceful beauty of the hammer head shark.

The city skyline, rising up above the Botanic Gardens.

Leaving the harbor, I delved into the Royal Botanic Gardens, which may be the most impressive I've ever visited. They certainly are the largest, the entire gardens taking up nearly as much space as the city of Sydney proper. As I made my way through well-manicured gardens, and an architecturally impressive Government House, I continued to appreciate the sunny, temperate, spring weather than was mine to enjoy for only as long as I remained in the Southern Hemisphere. Then out of nowhere, as I was walking passed a group of bache ball players, I was suddenly, and seemingly without provocation, attacked by a medium-sized bird. It dived at me, its tiny talons grazing my scalp and it continued it aerial assault on my head. My first instinct was to feel embarrassed, as though I should be ashamed that I was being attacked by a creature less than a tenth my size, but as soon as I stopped and appreciated my physical superiority, I quickly became annoyed and battle-ready. Of course, there was a perfectly reasonable justification for the bird's action's, though it took me a moment to realize it. It turns out that in trying to keep an appropriate distance from the ongoing bache game, I had strayed too close to a nest of baby birds. As I watched their little necks straining to compete for the offerings presented by a parent, I simultaneously forgave the actions of my attacker, and subsided annoyance for admiration.

Another example of good parenting, this male bird stood like a palace guard watching over his mate as she sat on their nest.

The Government House, a more stereotypical English manor house you cannot find in Sydney; or England for that matter.

After a full day of walking around Sydney, I passed a few weddings on my way back to the hostel. There I cooked up the most impressively delicious dish of pasta I have perhaps ever prepared, and I spent the rest of the evening chatting with my fellow hostel dwellers. Hoping to wake up early the next morning, I declined to go out on the town for the second night in a row, and instead enjoyed a quite night in, watching movies with some of my hostelmates.

Bats snooze in the trees high above the Royal Botanic Gardens.

I was up and at 'em early enough the next day, but yesterday's sunshine was not forthcoming and the sky threatened rain. As I had hoped to spend my last day in Australia down on the beach, this would seem to be a disappointment, but I made the best of it. Deciding that an umbrella would only egg on the precipitation, I left mine behind as I began what became a rather long walk to Bondi beach. For sand, surfing, and general beach-going stereotypes, Bondi beach ranks among the world's best. You have to figure that any stretch of coastline that can pack in 5,000+ beach-goers on a regular basis, despite being regularly infested with sharks, dangerous rips, and blue bottle jellyfish (some of the world's most toxic), has to have something going for it. So with no clear idea how far away, or even where, it was, I set off in what had been suggested to me as the direction of Bondi beach.

Displays of color abounded as I made my way through the suburbs enruite to Bondi.

It didn't help that I assumed that the east coast-facing Bondi beach was on the north coast-facing Sydney harbor, but even then it's at least an hour and a half long walk. Inside that first hour, it started to lightly rain, and by the time I made it to Bondi, about two hours after leaving the hostel, I was trying to find shelter from the downpour. Scampering out onto the beach quick enough to take a couple pictures, I quickly retreated to a bookstore/cafe, where I spent the afternoon sipping coffee, eating carrot cake, and reading a newly-purchased Bill Bryson travel book on Australia.

Bondi beach, nearly deserted in the driving rain.

As the rain showed no sign of letting up, I eventually abandoned Bondi, catching a bus back into town. There I found the majority of the hostel had never bothered to leave, and so I joined them in their late afternoon movie marathon. After yet another pasta-based meal, this one far more disastrous than last night's success, I continued by ongoing battle with the hostel's wifi, finally wrapping up shortly after midnight. I had put off packing, and as I would be leaving at 6:00 the next morning, I was now forced to engage in the delicate process packing in the dark while my roommates slept. Hoping that I hadn't left anything in a dark corner of the room, I set my alarm to wake me a mere four hours in the future, and slumped into bed for my last night in Australia.