Arriving in Sydney

We decided to finalize our grand Australian tour in the grandest way possible, by finishing off in Sydney! Wow! What a huge place this is. Sydney was rated last year the number 2 place in the world to live. Vienna as number one and Vancouver was number 4. I don't ask me about number 3 as I wasn't paying that much attention. One to describe Sydney? Huge! It's a massive city. Everything is big. The harbor is massive with oodles of places for shopping and eating. I'm very surprised that there's so many places to eat and shop, and all of them are full.

Our first day we arrived and cabbed it to our hotel. It was almost $70. It wouldn't have hurt so much if we didn't find out that our hotel has an airport shuttle that costs less than half of that for the both of us. Luckily it saved us money when we left. The Great Southern Hotel is where we stayed. It's an old hotel that has been in operation since 1939. It looks like a gangster hotel. Imagine that new movie Gangster Squad, but instead of Ryan Gosling, think Chinatown with Australians everywhere, because that's where the hotel is located, right in Chinatown.

Darling Harbor

Once we dropped our stuff of we made our way to Darling Harbor. This place was hopping! It's 9pm and packed full of people on a Tuesday night. I'm not talking just pre & post teenagers out drinking, I'm talking people of all ages with their families. There's lots to do for everyone I got to give it to them. They have amazing public spaces here and people sure love to use them! Something we can learn more about in Canada I think. The large rubber duck was sitting in the harbor at about 12 meters tall. It an art piece by a Dutch artist who's touring it around the world. There was also a soccer field floating right in the middle of the water as well. It was part of a corporate challenge. Very cool.

Chinatown

I mentioned Chinatown earlier, and this is one of the coolest Chinatowns of any city I've seen. You really feel like it's a mini version of Asia here. All the shops, very little English being spoken, all the food and goods are all from Asia. It was a lot of fun and not very small. In particular we visited a mall called Market City a block from our hotel. It is about half the size of Chinook Mall in Calgary (Calgary's largest mall) and has around 1800 stores in it! That is no typo! They're crammed in there. All kinds of hustle & bustle. If you want some cheap goods, this is the place.

Boat Tour

We decided it was time to take a tour of the harbor. There's lots of activities off all the different ports and little islands that are around the harbor. Sydney has two major harbors downtown. Darling Harbor, which is close to our hotel, and Circle Quay, which is where the Opera House is located. We thought to start at Darling Harbor and let the boat takes us around.  We hopped on and got the tour. It was quite relaxing going around the harbor. We later disembarked at Manly Beach, which is an incredible beach for surfing and lounging. Lots of surfers there with buff, toned bodies to help us feel completely inadequate, and loads of fresh sea food to help us feel good about soft bellies. Mmmmmm fresh sea food! Anna got completely sun burnt and I laughed a little at first, but was a good boyfriend and all sympathetic later on.

The Sydney Opera House

The next day we walked around downtown a bit and decided later in the evening to see the Sydney Opera House, something I've been wanting to do for a long time. What a build it is! Very unique with such a flare for style and drama. High ceilings, incredibly unique and perplexing roof architecture, and great spaces inside. The tours are well worth taking as they get you in to see all the theaters while the cast and crew are rehearsing for their evening performances. I got to tell you, there's a lot happening at any given time in this place. For starters, there's 4 theaters in this place. The largest one is for the orchestra which was performing a tribute to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey with video and a full choir. The second largest is where the opera and ballets are performed this night they were featuring La Boheme by Puccini. The theater company was performing La Soiree in the smaller dramatic theater, which is a mix of burlesque and acrobatics which is not for children under 16 at all. The fourth has a performance of a long running Broadway play called My First Time, based on the website www.myfirstime.com. It is hilarious! Also not for kids. We took that play in and had a ball!

Night Life

Once thing we noticed with all our walking up and down George Street (and we did a lot of walking) was that Sydney has a very active night life. There were loads of buskers, including a student drummer with his drum set  out (I could've taken him. Ha!) and a band that put many bands I've seen to shame. They were a duo and put on an amazing show...for free! On the corner of a major intersection with the monorail train moving above their heads! We were impressed! We walked through a unique, upscale part called The Rocks which has old architecture and high end shops with all the cars to match, as well as some beautiful shopping malls. The most interesting thing was through a small alleyway there's a cool restaurant there with bird cages hanging between the buildings. One night a retail fashion market just popped up out of nowhere selling jewelry, dresses for ladies, and other items of fashion.....for ladies.

In Summary

In conclusion, we loved Sydney. It was one of our favorite stops on our tour. It's a very exciting and vibrant place. You could easily spend a month here and still not do everything there is to do here. It's a very active and exciting place with such energy we haven't experienced anywhere else. As a result, we are now tired and eagerly looking forward to relaxing in Bali. We'll see you than!