Thu 27/12/12 19:38
Starting to get caught up on the blog

It’s Friday, the 28th and I really don’t know when I last made an entry. I decided that since I have internet here in Melbourne that I’d fix the problem with the blog not showing images before I post again. Unfortunately though I couldn’t fix the blog and I didn’t add a post, it appears that it’s a double loss. And now, as I’m writing this, the internet isn’t working at all.

Tonight was going to be my last night in Melbourne until I realized that my timing for everything was a little bit skewed. Because of the holiday season many of the hotels are full for this weekend. This kind of forced me to make a decision to either add a few nights on here or leave and take a chance of getting a hotel elsewhere. I decided to play it safe. I have to leave for my Jan 3 flight back to Dubai so I don’t want to get too far from Sydney, and everyone seems to think that everywhere I want to go is too far. I think the next time that I come to Australia I’ll start in Cairns, then head to Alice Springs, and then possibly back to Melbourne. Australia has been great so far, but I wasn’t prepared for the difficulty getting around to the key areas, so I’m kind of considering this as more of a scouting trip for at least a month long vacation here sometime later.

Yesterday, just like any normal vacation day for me, I’d go walking/hiking around the city trying to get a feel for the culture. It didn’t take long before I realized that I was just plain tired. Tired enough that by about 12 I had no reservations about heading back to the hotel for a nap. The nap turned out to be a day lounging around watching movies and tv. I have no regrets I think that I needed to just sit back and rest a little. In fact I’m thinking that after going for a walk this morning I may do the same thing again, head back early for some lounging around… it is after all supposed to be a vacation.

Tomorrow I’m planning on going for a tour outside of Melbourne. I haven’t decided which tour, but I’m leaning towards a ocean drive that takes about a day to complete. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but Dubai is a cheap city to live in. Since I’ve been in Melbourne there have been so many things that have sounded like a blast to do, like take a helicopter ride or go for some acrobatic flying in a vintage airplane… the thing is, is these things are just out of my budget. To get an idea of one of the cheaper things that I wanted to do was go to the zoo. I’m not really a zoo lover, and to be honest I only wanted to go because there is an exhibit called, “I, Animal” that sounded interesting. Turns out that it cost $50 to go. It occurs to me that I must be getting old because a visit to a zoo or museum should never be more than $20…I just can’t grasp $50 per person to go to the zoo.

You know what I realized a little while ago? If you could see me from the space station I would be upside down. :)

Oh, and I have tried several times to see a toilet flush in the reverse direction. Heck, I even filled up a sink to see if I could get a whirlpool to go in the opposite direction and as of yet everything seems to be the same.

Time for me to go for a walk… I think I’ll head to the closest beach. Though from the looks of it, it will start raining soon, and I may only get close.

Thu 27/12/12 19:36
It is a nice place

I got downtown and to my surprise the city was crowded with people everywhere. Considering that at 8 when I arrived it was completely deserted it was a nice change. Not really sure of what I was going to do, I took a seat on a bench in front of the train station and pulled out my map. As I did, I looked across the street and saw a “free” tour getting ready to start. What timing. So in just a few minutes I joined up with the group and we headed out. I got to admit I think the free tours are the best tours. Maybe because the expectation is lower, or maybe the tour leaders try harder, but whatever the reason I enjoyed this tour.

After the tour I wasn’t ready to quit so I kept walking. I had hoped to make it to the ocean, but didn’t get that far. I was walking along the Yarra river following it to the sea for about an hour before the path ended. Oh well, I felt that I was getting too tired to actually make it much further so although I didn’t make it to the sea, I did get to see much of that part of Melbourne… the rich part.

I got back to the hotel checked in and then headed out to find a place to eat. There’s quite a few small restaurants in the area, and many of them looked like they’d have great food in the end I opted for fast food.

Thu 27/12/12 19:25
I like what I have seen so far

It was a long day yesterday. I had to check out of my room by 10 and my bus didn’t leave until 8 that night. That left about 10 hours on Christmas day just to walk around and take in any sights that I may have missed the past four days.  Turns out that I’ve pretty much seen all of Sydney which means most of the ten hours was just walking around and dodging rain showers. That was okay until it started to rain heavily and there was no “dodging” any more. No worries though, it has been a long time since I’ve walked in the rain and it was kind of nice.

The bus left a little early and to make things even a little better, I had both seats to myself the whole journey to Melbourne. Considering how many times we stopped to let people on and off I feel pretty lucky.

It’s 10 am and I’m at my hotel in Melbourne right now and have just finished breakfast. I can’t check in until 2 this afternoon, so I’ll have to figure out what to do for next few hours. Although I’ve been through the city by bus and by train I don’t know what to expect before I go out again. There doesn’t seem to be very many people out on the streets though. I guess it could be that many, or most people have the week off.

Mon 24/12/12 17:47
Bondi Beach

Merry Christmas! I found out that there is a problem with the blog in that it won’t allow me to post photos. It would probably be an easy fix if I could find internet access somewhere. Australia has a lot going for it, but its access to the web is somewhat lacking. I even mentioned it to someone as I was booking a bus ticket the other day and they said I don’t even know how bad it actually is. I guess they pay twice as much with half the speed… if this guy was telling me the truth.

Since my last entry I’ve been walking all over the city as well as heading out to some of the nearby beaches. Yesterday I took a 30-minute bus ride to the “famous” Bondi beach. I’m not sure that I had heard of it before coming to Sydney, but according to the tourist brochures, it is “World Famous.” It is a beautiful beach with lots of beautiful people everywhere; I definitely felt a little self-conscience walking around with my belly. The reason I went though wasn’t to lay in the sun but to go for a coast walk that I read about. I don’t know the exact length, but I seem to remember reading 10 km somewhere. I decided to walk the walk, there and back, for a total of 20 km. I enjoyed myself enough that I decided to try to walk back to the city, probably another 20 km from Bondi Beach. Unfortunately, by the time I got back to the starting point I was feeling a little sore and wimped out and took the bus.

A couple of days ago I did a great tour of the city. It was one of the free tours that are common in some of the bigger cities. They’re considered free except you are expected to tip the guide when it’s over. The tour lasted about 4 hours and took us all over the city I felt that I learned more about Sydney in those four hours than I have the rest of the time that I’ve been here. Afterwards I decided to walk up to the harbor bridge to get a few more photographs of the opera house. I don’t think it’s possible for me to take a new photo of the opera house anymore. I’ve probably take 200 since I’ve been here and except for it being very iconic, it’s pretty boring now.

It’s been raining here from about 10 last night. It’s been coming down hard at times and just drizzling other times. I can say that this will probably be the last time I listen to anyone about a location again. Before I left I was told that it was going to be hot, “…you do know that it’s summer there right now?” Which it has been far from hot. I would guess that it is warmer in Dubai than it has been in Sydney since I’ve been here. Maybe they just have cold summers.

Mon 24/12/12 17:46

Not too much to talk about today as I’ve been pretty much doing the same thing as I have been doing, walking around the city. I’ve gone to different harbors, seen some different sights, but all in all not much new to mention. Today, I’m going to be going on a tour of the Sydney. It starts in about an hour and although I’m not expecting anything to be overwhelmingly interesting, I do think it will be nice to be walked around the city.

This jetlag is really becoming a nuisance though. Got up at 1 yesterday, got up at 11 today, and hopefully I’ll be back to normal by tomorrow. There are a few things that I want to do that will take most of the day so each one kind of requires that I’m up and out the door early. Around Sydney there are several beach paths that range from 5 to 10 km and each sound like they’d be a lot of fun, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to start late in the day… who knows though, it may be my only opportunity if the jetlag doesn’t subside.

Fri 21/12/12 22:50
My first day in Sydney

I landed to an overcast sky at Sydney international at about 9am, said goodbye to Roosha (sp) and headed to customs. I’d been somewhat wary of the Australian customs for some while, the reason for my nervousness isn’t clear, but I could just feel my heart rate start to increase as I was in the line. Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t “nervous” since I knew that I had done nothing wrong and had nothing to worry about, but I just was a little “tense” as I moved forward. I get up to the passport control and the guy looks at my passport, runs it through the computer and then writes a big “A” on my tourist card and then told me that I’m going to have to have someone else look at it. A woman comes over, takes my passport and leads me to another desk. About 5 minutes later I’m back on my way to customs. I’m queued up in front of the scanners when an officer asks me where I’m coming from and I tell him Dubai, and out of nowhere a different officer comes over and asks me to “please comer over here.” She was nice, and she just asked where I was going, why I was here, and a lot of other questions. She eventually scanned my luggage and thanked me.  I don’t know if I was receiving “special” treatment or just a victim of random checks, but all I know is that my spidey-sense seems to be working quite well.

I got to my hotel at about 1, and decided to head out to get a feel for Sydney. I took a charter bus from the airport which dropped me off directly at the hotel. In the course of taking the other passengers to their hotels I was beginning to feel like I understood Sydney a little. It’s not bad. It’s big, but I don’t really get a feeling that it is too big. The architecture seems very much the way I remember Portland, Oregon. There is a mix of older and newer buildings, the older being from the late 1800’s and the majority from the seventies and eighties.  The streets are laid out in such a way that it’s kind of hard to get lost—always a good thing for me.

My first goal was the opera house. I made it pretty quickly to the harbor and snapped lots of photos of the bridge and opera. I noticed that there is a party atmosphere to the harbor area. It seems that every bar is full of people all having a blast, (and when I think of it, all of Sydney seems to be that way) lots of tourists and lots of natives.

My next trip was to head to take a ferry to one of the cities around the area. I didn’t know which one to take so I decided on Manly City. It was pretty cool, the ferry wasn’t crowded and it was about an hour ride. It appears, at least where I went in Manly that it is a tourist area. Everything was clean, the people were beautiful, there were lots of souvenir shops, it is nestled on a beautiful white beach, and it was very, very expensive; $17 for a shwarma, $50 for a pair of flip-flops, and the best I saw was $6.50 for a 500 ml soda. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful little town.

After walking around for a while I headed back to Sydney and eventually to my hotel room. I was so tired that I ended up falling asleep on the ferry, repeatedly. I thought that I’d make an early day of it and get a fresh start in the morning. So after getting dinner, trying to find a wifi spot, and grabbing some snacks I got back to the hotel at around 6. Unfortunately I was not able to fall asleep and ended up staying awake until about 4 am.

My next portion of the trip is planned. I’m heading down to Melbourne on Christmas day and from there I’ll decide what to do next. I really wanted to go to The Great Barrier Reef, but it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing that for some time. It’s just too expensive, too far, and too few options for me to feel comfortable having my vacation dependent on being there.