Sydney, Australia part 1

Hello to one and all from Sydney, Australia. It has been a couple of weeks since my last update, but it has been a busy couple of weeks for sure. The first two days in country were spend on my last blog update and taking care of a few things, but after that, I was able to switch back into being a tourist in new city and country. I spend a couple of days walking as far as possible through the city.

That is when it happened.....the sort of "Wow, I am in Austrailia" moment I did not get in the first few days. There I was standing on the Harbour Bridge, looking down at the Opera house. See the picture above. I mean, the Opera House is one of the things many people think of when they think of Australia, especially Sydney. How many times did they pan to it during the Olympics? It was pretty specatular. The other picture is me with both the Opera House and the Bridge in the background as taken from Macquerie Point.

It was a pretty special. Along with the well known landmarks, I also wandered on throughout the downtown area. I went into the skytower, which provided great views of downtown. I wandered through Hyde Park, and down Kings Wharf and Darling Harbour. Altogether, I am a big fan of the city. The weather has been great and the people have been nice. (And although the weather seems nice to me, apparently Australia is in the middle of a horrific 4 year drought, and there are tons of fire bans and water restrictions.) The different parks and gardens and landmarks and bridges are all wide open for people to run around and people seem largely active. I was later told this is not the case, and Australia is the second least fit country after America. Maybe I was just in awe of a cool new city, because sydney is great. Public transport is plentiful and easily accessible. This is good as people have been driving on the wrong side of the road since I have left the US. Can you imagine driving a standard transmission car on the wrong side of the car while trying to remember to stay on the wrong side of the road? Clearly I will not be driving on this trip, at least not for a while. It is hard enough not walking out into traffic because I am looking the wrong direction. In fact, many things have been backwards to the states. Light switches are all upside down for on and off, peolpe walk on the left side of the sidewalk, toilets DO flush differently, among other things. I did not realize that Australia was as big as the US (at least the main 48 states), but it is. It makes travel here more difficult than say, New Zealand due to distance issues.

Worst of all, they love mayonnaise and vegemite (which is HORRIBLE - never eat it), and it is nearly impossible to find decent mustard and peanut butter. Some important staples to my diet. On the flip side, Cadbury chocolate is top notch and kangaroo is quite tasty. Traveling with people from other countries does other odd things to what you eat as well. For instance, I have acquired a taste for baked beans on toast for breakfast - very traditional in England as well as Meat Pies with Ketchup are also good.

I am going to pause for a moment to congratulate the Cardinals on their World Series berth and wish them luck against the Tigers.

Other random things about Australia - they are home to all sorts of interesting creaturs. The first, second, and like 7th deadliest spiders are found in this country, the deadliest snake, deadly jellyfish, sharks, crocodiles and all sorts of things of that nature. Most are in the bush (rural country areas not along the coast) or rainforest. I saw a wombat - try and picture a walking lump somewhere between a manatee and an armadillo sort of thing.

I am sure the longer I stay, I will figure out a bunch more fun things, as well.

I will make some additional postings after this one to fill in some more pictures of some of the things I mentioned above.

Until next time.