Introduction to Sydney

While the food and the service were outstanding, and having a movie library and a fold down bed made some of the time pass, at 10 hours into it, Charles looked at my watch and gave me his 'aghast' look at the fact that 4 hours remained yet. First Class was quite a treat; after takeoff we climbed into our star trek issue sleep suits, and were totally pampered, as our plane made a bee-line across the Pacific to Sydney. Approach into the city from the ocean was breathtaking, and seeing the harbor and the bridge and the opera house from the sky made it all real. One sees far away places on video and in photos, but when your own two eyes take it in, the world becomes that much smaller.

When we landed we had a nice fellow, who we think goes to our church, be our personal escort through customs. Our bags were first off and we cleared quarantine (for food items) with no problem. An ATM was close at hand, and within 40 minutes of landing, we were at the train platform waiting to head into the city. Our hotel was easy to find, even with luggage in tow, and the room we have is spectacular. The night manager said we had a little terrace, which we assumed was just a small balcony. No, we have probably 275 square feet out there with a lounge chair, a table for 4, and room to have a party. We're considering finding a bunch of new friends just to have a party on this balcony.

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We slept Wednesday night through, and today was ad-hoc, but chock full of Australian goodness. We had a good old English fry-up for breakfast at a cafe around the corner from our hotel, and ambled along Oxford street a bit. After a quick pit stop at the hotel, our destination was the Opera House on foot, going through Hyde Park and part of the botanical garden. The cloudless sky and low sun on our faces as we headed north made for a comfortable walk, although some of the shadows were chilly. Its nearing winter here, and some trees are turning, but its still tropical enough to have lots of palms and bird-of-paradise plants blooming. I knew I was on the other side of the planet, as I walked through the park.

Rather than grackles and barnsweeps, there were ibises and crested pigeons pecking the ground. There were colorful lorakeets nesting in the palms, and a particularly noisy breed of white and black magpie flying about. In one section of the park, there were some noisy birds in part of the trees, but I couldn't see exactly where the noise was coming from. Charles pointed up in one of the trees 100 yards off, and said "There's the noisemakers: they're bats." Hanging from the branches were dozens of these huge black drops with red ends hanging off the branches. Looking at the trees closer to us, there were more and more of them till I realized that the bats were in all the trees all around me; these enormous creatures, some of them even flying about from tree to tree. It was a thrilling sight seeing these guys flying about. We got a few photos and a movie even. The 'flying foxes' or fruit bats, are a unique species to Australia, and walking through their habitat there in the garden was both creepy and exhilirating. Our bats in Austin can't be seen during the day, and even at night, they're so small that its sometimes hard to distinguish them; these bats were the size of small cats, with wingspans around a couple of feet, I'm sure. I hope to go back and see them in the evening as they take off to feed.

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We continued through the garden, around the governor's house, and on to our first glimpse of the Opera House. We didn't go in or anything, but got a few nice photos and had a cappucino near the hall. From the Opera House we went to the Circular Quay, where we did a bit of tourist watching, and had a lunch of fish and chips. Most of the breading and fries went to the greedy yellow-eyed gulls that were begging along the quay. The quay was around the bend from "The Rocks" or the old section of Sydney and the harbour.

We didn't really wander the Rocks, but went instead through the neighborhood to check out availability of the "Bridge Climb" of the Harbor Bridge, seeing as how the day was perfect. One of the 3.5 hour climb groups had just started, and we were able to join them after a swipe of the credit card. They suited us up in their jumpsuits, fitted us with hats and glasses straps, radios, and set us off up the bridge. The climb-leader had a batch of schtick he went through, but setting the headphones aside, allowed me to really enjoy the scenery and the view. The entire climb wasn't really that long, as they paced it nice and easy for all different skill levels. We had a blast climbing up the ladders and along the underside of the bridge, and the view from the top was indeed spectacular.

We could see from the Tasman sea to the Great Dividing range, or the Blue mountains. The leader pointed out a church steeple against the skyscrapers of downtown. The steeple was the second tallest structure when the bridge was built, and its dwarfed by the buildings around it now, but obviously was dwarfed by the bridge when it was built. Its quite a massive structure. Charles is a bit scared of heights, but it only hit him a few times when he looked straight down. He made the climb like a champ. Once the climb was over, we hiked back toward the train for a ride back to the hotel. Charles' dogs were barking, so our trajectory was tending toward a nap. The nap quickly turned into a 7pm bedtime, cause while I though we'd escaped jetlag, it must have been right there in the wings.

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Friday Morning, 6:20am: We went to bed at 7pm last night, so are up really early this morning. Stepping out onto the patio, against the gradually lightening sky, we can see the bats return from their night's feeding. They're all heading toward the park, and fortunately, I see none carrying back any small children. I think the bats are great.