The Slightly Longer Sydney Stop-over....
G'day to you all!
I hope this episode finds you all well. Lynn and I are now in Mumbai, India and just about coping with the oppressive heat. If I carry on perspiring at the current rate though then this may very well be the last blog I write as I will undoubtedly dribble away to nothing before the week is out!
Before I start this episode proper and before the season turns sour I'd just like to gloat over the fact that Aston Villa are the last unbeaten team in the Premiership now - Come on you Villans!!! [And with Fulham at home on Saturday this run looks likely to continue don't you think, Phil?!]
Well, that little outburst over with, here is the next edition of our trip detailing what we got up to during our stop-over in Sydney, Australia. Unless you have a brain like a sieve you already know the reason why we ended up 'stuck' here for 10 days rather than the 3 days we had originally planned. But if you do need reminding then it's all in the last episode!
So, we arrived in Sydney on Thursday 5th and left for India on Sunday 15th October. 10 days: here's what happened....
Thursday 5th: We arrive in the late afternoon from New Zealand. As a leaving present from work Lynn's former colleagues bought her (well, us) 3 nights at the Marriott Hotel overlooking Hyde Park in the centre of Sydney. It was all pre-booked and paid for and all we had to do was show up and say who we were. We are on the 15th floor and have stunning views over the park outside. Our room is pretty big, housing an enormous queen-size bed. There's a huge TV and sofa in there too so it's just a little bit posher than our normal standards. Then there's the bathroom which is bigger than some of the rooms we've stayed in over the last 7 months. But then, it has to be big as it contains a bath that could almost acommodate our previous home, the campervan!
Friday 6th: Our first full day in Sydney was spent frustratingly, (as you know because you either remember or re-read the last episode) at the Indian Consulate or at the Airline office re-arranging our flights. These tasks completed, we set about seeing what was on offer to the budding tourist. First stop had to be the harbour-front so we could take in the magnificient view of Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House. It's pretty impressive it has to be said though I have to say the Opera House looks far more impressive from afar than it does close-up.
Saturday 7th: We took a trip up to the observation deck of Sydney (Centrepoint) Tower which at 305m is the tallest building in Australia. It was the tallest in the southern hemisphere until New Zealand built their Auckland Sky Tower and made it just a few metres taller! It's a tremendous view but the windows are quite dirty and the famous harbour is hidden behind a wall of sky-scrapers which is a pity. In the evening we head back to the harbour to try and capture some good photos.
Sunday 8th: Our 3 day spell in the luxury of the Marriott has come to and end today and originally so too would our time in Australia. As it is, we have to wait for our visas and there's no way we can afford to stay at the Marriott until they're ready so some humbler acommodation must be sought. We book in at the Sydney Central YHA. We can have a double room from tomorrow but for today we'll have to go into a dorm room. From 5 star luxury to dorm room in a hostel in the space of one morning! There's an internet cafe next door so we head there for the afternoon so we can write the next episode (NZ: South Island) on our blogsite.
Monday 9th: We head to the Sydney Aquarium this morning. Have you noticed how everything in Sydney is called "Sydney something or other" - Sydney Aquarium; Sydney Opera House; Sydney Harbour Bridge; Sydney Tower... I don't recall anywhere else I've been to being quite so obsessed with calling everything after their city name. "Ooh, today I went to London Buckingham Palace and then London Tower of London!".... Anyway, we went to the Sydney Aquarium. It was pretty good but the viewing was spoiled somewhat by the huge quantities of kids screaming and yelling and smearing grubby fingerprints on the glass and getting in the way of patient, polite tourists, ie. me, when they're trying to take a photograph. I debated chucking a few of them into the shark pool just to give them something worthwhile to holler about but luckily for them my unusually tolerant nature held out. We found out later that today was the first day of the school holidays. In the afternoon we take a cruise around the harbour so we can get a few more photos of the harbour (and escape all the kids!) but they turn out to be disappointing!
Tuesday 10th: Every day in Sydney so far has been hot and sunny with clear, blue skies so last night we made a decision to get up at the ungodly hour of 04:00 this morning and march down to a famous viewpoint called Macquaries Point for some photos of the Opera House at dawn. Despite being half asleep for most of the 45 minute walk we are excited at the photo opportunities we anticipate getting and rather frustrated when we realise that we are about to experience our first (and as it turned out, only) cloudy morning in Sydney. We take a few photos anyway since we're here but the orange sky we anticipated just isn't there. Later in the morning we head to the Contemporary Art Museum. I quite like contemporary art, I generally find it alot more interesting than these dark old paintings from the 1600's of religious scenes or portraits of men with silly moustaches or women picking fruit or some other such twaddle. However, I can honestly say that this was the biggest load of crap I'd ever seen in my life. These 'works of art' make the Turner Prize entrants look good, that's how bad they were! If you ever find yourself in Sydney skip on over to the Contemporary Art Museum to see for yourself such classics as "an unwrapped chocolate bar floating in a bucket of water on the floor"; "a poorly made wooden box, the inside of which is thickly coated in blue paint with a pencil stuck in it" or perhaps you'll like the classic "pair of jeans dropped on the floor". I thought about handing in this last one to lost property until I realised I was about to wander off with one of the exhibits under my arm! What a load of poo. Atleast it was free poo though. It's far worse if you've got to pay to get in, and then it's poo!
Wednesday 11th: We decide not to try any more dawn photo sessions as it only makes the weather bad so today we get up at 09:00 and lo and behold, the weather is glorious! We decide that since it's so nice we'll head down to Bondi Beach and spend the day there. It's a lovely beach, not quite as picturesque as Rio's city beaches but considerably cleaner! I tried to go for a swim but wussed out when I got as far as my shins as it was absolutely freezing. For a minute I thought I'd been transported back home and was paddling in the Atlantic!
Thursday 12th: Today we went to the Homebush Bay Olympic Park. We take a tour around the magnificent Telstra Stadium which housed the Olympic track and field events. The running track is no longer there and the stadium is now used for football, rugby, cricket and forthcoming U2 concerts! The tour takes you into the stadium from the underground carpark which is where the players/competitors/rock stars enter from. In all we visit the top-most stand, the VIP section and executive suites, the TV rooms and commentary boxes, the changing rooms (the one infact used by England when they beat Australia in the World Cup final in 2003) and then we went out onto the pitch through the players tunnel whilst crowd noise was blaring out through the speaker system! Out on the pitch by the tunnel entrance was the original Olympic Medals podium that so many of the stars received their medals from. It was a terrific tour, thoroughly recommended. After a brief lunch we headed to the Olympic Pool where Ian Thorpe (The Thorpedo) won Australia so many of it's gold medals and he broke so many of the world records. The pool is now open to the public and so we took our kit along with us. When we emerged out into the poolside area we found out that the lanes were all set up as if for racing.
"Ooh, I'm going to have to do a few lengths in the middle lanes just like Ian Thorpe" I tell Lynn before running off to get in. Well, I don't reckon there was much difference between his official 50 metre Freestyle world-record and my marginally slower but unofficial 50 metre Nostyle world-record. I mean, lets not quibble over a couple of hundredths of a second, shall we?!
In the evening we head to the Sydney Opera House to see a show. I'm not much of a theatre person but Lynn really wants to go and see something and I'm happy enough to go for the novelty value of saying "Yeah, I've seen a show at the Sydney Opera House". We are seeing "The Pirates Of Penzance".
"So it's a play is it?" I ask Lynn.
"It's a musical."
[small pause] "So, who's playing Buttons?"
"No one's playing Buttons, he's not in it."
"What do you mean? There's always a Buttons, a fairy godmother and a ugly sister"
"It's a musical, not a panto" Lynn replies, sensing the fact that she's in for a long evening.
[small pause] "Will I be able to shout 'He's behiiiind youuUUU!' at any point during the course of the show?"
"Definately not"
[small pause] "Will the opportunity arise whereby we can exchange the good old 'Ohhhhhh yes it it!'....'Ohhhhh no it isn't!' banter with the people on the stage"
"No. You just sit there and watch it and enjoy it" I'm told, curtly.
Oh, I see. Well, I'm not sure I really did enjoy it. It was ok but I won't be jumping at the chance to go again. Give me 90 minutes of football over 90 minutes of operatic wailing any day. And it didn't really have much to do with pirates either!
Friday 13th: We turned up at the Indian Consulate and waited (along with most of the other people in Sydney by the looks of it) and eventually emerge with our passports and visas, hoorah! Afterwards we head to the Powerhouse Museum which was superb, my favourite museum so far on our travels (except Sydney's Contemporary Art Museum, obviously). There is a big temporary exhibit on the Great Wall of China so we thought we'd better go and have a look since we shall hopefully be going there for real in about 3 months. There are also good exhibitions on graphic design and Australian inventions which I really enjoyed.
Saturday 14th: We went to the Brett Whiteley Gallery which I first heard about on 'Billy Connelly's World Tour of Australia' which was a superb place. The artist used to live there (he died in 1992) and the gallery has been left just as it was when he lived there with his bed in the corner and his shoes on the floor. And you can sift through his cd collection too (lots of Bob Dylan!). It really gave you an insight into the sort of person he was as opposed to the usual case where you just look at the paintings and don't really know about the artist. A lunch at 'Harry's Cafe on Wheels' (another Billy Connelly recommendation) is followed by a trip to the Art Gallery of NSW which was a vast improvement on the Contemporary Art place!
Sunday 15th: We left the YHA hostel at 07:00 in the morning bound for the airport. Our flight was late leaving by nearly an hour but was otherwise uneventful. I watched a superb movie on the way to India called "Kenny". It's an Aussie movie done in a documentary style about a bloke who works for a Portaloo company. It is really, really funny and if you can find it in the UK, I strongly recommend watching it. Hilarious!
And that's it. I shall endevour to keep you posted about the course of our travels here in India. For now though we're in Mumbai and the time is 15:00. At 20:25 we leave on the train north to Ahmedabad before heading to Udaipur and then onto New Delhi. We are meeting a couple of friends (Esther and Keith) in Delhi on Friday 27th October so I'm hoping to have a "First 2 weeks in India" episode on the blogsite just before they arrive.
So, until then, take care.
Rich
I hope this episode finds you all well. Lynn and I are now in Mumbai, India and just about coping with the oppressive heat. If I carry on perspiring at the current rate though then this may very well be the last blog I write as I will undoubtedly dribble away to nothing before the week is out!
Before I start this episode proper and before the season turns sour I'd just like to gloat over the fact that Aston Villa are the last unbeaten team in the Premiership now - Come on you Villans!!! [And with Fulham at home on Saturday this run looks likely to continue don't you think, Phil?!]
Well, that little outburst over with, here is the next edition of our trip detailing what we got up to during our stop-over in Sydney, Australia. Unless you have a brain like a sieve you already know the reason why we ended up 'stuck' here for 10 days rather than the 3 days we had originally planned. But if you do need reminding then it's all in the last episode!
So, we arrived in Sydney on Thursday 5th and left for India on Sunday 15th October. 10 days: here's what happened....
Thursday 5th: We arrive in the late afternoon from New Zealand. As a leaving present from work Lynn's former colleagues bought her (well, us) 3 nights at the Marriott Hotel overlooking Hyde Park in the centre of Sydney. It was all pre-booked and paid for and all we had to do was show up and say who we were. We are on the 15th floor and have stunning views over the park outside. Our room is pretty big, housing an enormous queen-size bed. There's a huge TV and sofa in there too so it's just a little bit posher than our normal standards. Then there's the bathroom which is bigger than some of the rooms we've stayed in over the last 7 months. But then, it has to be big as it contains a bath that could almost acommodate our previous home, the campervan!
Friday 6th: Our first full day in Sydney was spent frustratingly, (as you know because you either remember or re-read the last episode) at the Indian Consulate or at the Airline office re-arranging our flights. These tasks completed, we set about seeing what was on offer to the budding tourist. First stop had to be the harbour-front so we could take in the magnificient view of Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House. It's pretty impressive it has to be said though I have to say the Opera House looks far more impressive from afar than it does close-up.
Saturday 7th: We took a trip up to the observation deck of Sydney (Centrepoint) Tower which at 305m is the tallest building in Australia. It was the tallest in the southern hemisphere until New Zealand built their Auckland Sky Tower and made it just a few metres taller! It's a tremendous view but the windows are quite dirty and the famous harbour is hidden behind a wall of sky-scrapers which is a pity. In the evening we head back to the harbour to try and capture some good photos.
Sunday 8th: Our 3 day spell in the luxury of the Marriott has come to and end today and originally so too would our time in Australia. As it is, we have to wait for our visas and there's no way we can afford to stay at the Marriott until they're ready so some humbler acommodation must be sought. We book in at the Sydney Central YHA. We can have a double room from tomorrow but for today we'll have to go into a dorm room. From 5 star luxury to dorm room in a hostel in the space of one morning! There's an internet cafe next door so we head there for the afternoon so we can write the next episode (NZ: South Island) on our blogsite.
Monday 9th: We head to the Sydney Aquarium this morning. Have you noticed how everything in Sydney is called "Sydney something or other" - Sydney Aquarium; Sydney Opera House; Sydney Harbour Bridge; Sydney Tower... I don't recall anywhere else I've been to being quite so obsessed with calling everything after their city name. "Ooh, today I went to London Buckingham Palace and then London Tower of London!".... Anyway, we went to the Sydney Aquarium. It was pretty good but the viewing was spoiled somewhat by the huge quantities of kids screaming and yelling and smearing grubby fingerprints on the glass and getting in the way of patient, polite tourists, ie. me, when they're trying to take a photograph. I debated chucking a few of them into the shark pool just to give them something worthwhile to holler about but luckily for them my unusually tolerant nature held out. We found out later that today was the first day of the school holidays. In the afternoon we take a cruise around the harbour so we can get a few more photos of the harbour (and escape all the kids!) but they turn out to be disappointing!
Tuesday 10th: Every day in Sydney so far has been hot and sunny with clear, blue skies so last night we made a decision to get up at the ungodly hour of 04:00 this morning and march down to a famous viewpoint called Macquaries Point for some photos of the Opera House at dawn. Despite being half asleep for most of the 45 minute walk we are excited at the photo opportunities we anticipate getting and rather frustrated when we realise that we are about to experience our first (and as it turned out, only) cloudy morning in Sydney. We take a few photos anyway since we're here but the orange sky we anticipated just isn't there. Later in the morning we head to the Contemporary Art Museum. I quite like contemporary art, I generally find it alot more interesting than these dark old paintings from the 1600's of religious scenes or portraits of men with silly moustaches or women picking fruit or some other such twaddle. However, I can honestly say that this was the biggest load of crap I'd ever seen in my life. These 'works of art' make the Turner Prize entrants look good, that's how bad they were! If you ever find yourself in Sydney skip on over to the Contemporary Art Museum to see for yourself such classics as "an unwrapped chocolate bar floating in a bucket of water on the floor"; "a poorly made wooden box, the inside of which is thickly coated in blue paint with a pencil stuck in it" or perhaps you'll like the classic "pair of jeans dropped on the floor". I thought about handing in this last one to lost property until I realised I was about to wander off with one of the exhibits under my arm! What a load of poo. Atleast it was free poo though. It's far worse if you've got to pay to get in, and then it's poo!
Wednesday 11th: We decide not to try any more dawn photo sessions as it only makes the weather bad so today we get up at 09:00 and lo and behold, the weather is glorious! We decide that since it's so nice we'll head down to Bondi Beach and spend the day there. It's a lovely beach, not quite as picturesque as Rio's city beaches but considerably cleaner! I tried to go for a swim but wussed out when I got as far as my shins as it was absolutely freezing. For a minute I thought I'd been transported back home and was paddling in the Atlantic!
Thursday 12th: Today we went to the Homebush Bay Olympic Park. We take a tour around the magnificent Telstra Stadium which housed the Olympic track and field events. The running track is no longer there and the stadium is now used for football, rugby, cricket and forthcoming U2 concerts! The tour takes you into the stadium from the underground carpark which is where the players/competitors/rock stars enter from. In all we visit the top-most stand, the VIP section and executive suites, the TV rooms and commentary boxes, the changing rooms (the one infact used by England when they beat Australia in the World Cup final in 2003) and then we went out onto the pitch through the players tunnel whilst crowd noise was blaring out through the speaker system! Out on the pitch by the tunnel entrance was the original Olympic Medals podium that so many of the stars received their medals from. It was a terrific tour, thoroughly recommended. After a brief lunch we headed to the Olympic Pool where Ian Thorpe (The Thorpedo) won Australia so many of it's gold medals and he broke so many of the world records. The pool is now open to the public and so we took our kit along with us. When we emerged out into the poolside area we found out that the lanes were all set up as if for racing.
"Ooh, I'm going to have to do a few lengths in the middle lanes just like Ian Thorpe" I tell Lynn before running off to get in. Well, I don't reckon there was much difference between his official 50 metre Freestyle world-record and my marginally slower but unofficial 50 metre Nostyle world-record. I mean, lets not quibble over a couple of hundredths of a second, shall we?!
In the evening we head to the Sydney Opera House to see a show. I'm not much of a theatre person but Lynn really wants to go and see something and I'm happy enough to go for the novelty value of saying "Yeah, I've seen a show at the Sydney Opera House". We are seeing "The Pirates Of Penzance".
"So it's a play is it?" I ask Lynn.
"It's a musical."
[small pause] "So, who's playing Buttons?"
"No one's playing Buttons, he's not in it."
"What do you mean? There's always a Buttons, a fairy godmother and a ugly sister"
"It's a musical, not a panto" Lynn replies, sensing the fact that she's in for a long evening.
[small pause] "Will I be able to shout 'He's behiiiind youuUUU!' at any point during the course of the show?"
"Definately not"
[small pause] "Will the opportunity arise whereby we can exchange the good old 'Ohhhhhh yes it it!'....'Ohhhhh no it isn't!' banter with the people on the stage"
"No. You just sit there and watch it and enjoy it" I'm told, curtly.
Oh, I see. Well, I'm not sure I really did enjoy it. It was ok but I won't be jumping at the chance to go again. Give me 90 minutes of football over 90 minutes of operatic wailing any day. And it didn't really have much to do with pirates either!
Friday 13th: We turned up at the Indian Consulate and waited (along with most of the other people in Sydney by the looks of it) and eventually emerge with our passports and visas, hoorah! Afterwards we head to the Powerhouse Museum which was superb, my favourite museum so far on our travels (except Sydney's Contemporary Art Museum, obviously). There is a big temporary exhibit on the Great Wall of China so we thought we'd better go and have a look since we shall hopefully be going there for real in about 3 months. There are also good exhibitions on graphic design and Australian inventions which I really enjoyed.
Saturday 14th: We went to the Brett Whiteley Gallery which I first heard about on 'Billy Connelly's World Tour of Australia' which was a superb place. The artist used to live there (he died in 1992) and the gallery has been left just as it was when he lived there with his bed in the corner and his shoes on the floor. And you can sift through his cd collection too (lots of Bob Dylan!). It really gave you an insight into the sort of person he was as opposed to the usual case where you just look at the paintings and don't really know about the artist. A lunch at 'Harry's Cafe on Wheels' (another Billy Connelly recommendation) is followed by a trip to the Art Gallery of NSW which was a vast improvement on the Contemporary Art place!
Sunday 15th: We left the YHA hostel at 07:00 in the morning bound for the airport. Our flight was late leaving by nearly an hour but was otherwise uneventful. I watched a superb movie on the way to India called "Kenny". It's an Aussie movie done in a documentary style about a bloke who works for a Portaloo company. It is really, really funny and if you can find it in the UK, I strongly recommend watching it. Hilarious!
And that's it. I shall endevour to keep you posted about the course of our travels here in India. For now though we're in Mumbai and the time is 15:00. At 20:25 we leave on the train north to Ahmedabad before heading to Udaipur and then onto New Delhi. We are meeting a couple of friends (Esther and Keith) in Delhi on Friday 27th October so I'm hoping to have a "First 2 weeks in India" episode on the blogsite just before they arrive.
So, until then, take care.
Rich
Comments