A Double-Decker Bus Tour of Sydney (Part Two of Three)

We have learned so much about how we travel together, Amy and I. We pretty much like the same things. If it has to do with animals, we are all over it (African Big Five, Australian koalas and kangaroos, yesterday's trip to the Taronga Zoo) We will go to museums if they are on the itinerary, but would rarely go out of the way to see one. On our very first stop on our way to Hyderabad, we spent a few nights in Frankfurt, Germany. There was actually a famous museum filled with religious icons that I had thought I might like to go see... but we never got around to doing it.

I did forget to mention one slight "downer" about our Taronga Zoo experience... we waited too long to see the orangutans and they were on an extended "break" during the heat of the day, and were not expected to be out running around again until after the sun was on its way down. But the chimpanzees were pretty cute and playful.... see the photo journal in yesterday's blog enrty.

Another thing we have learned is that if you have a limited time to spend in any one city, and if the city is of any size whatsoever, taking one of those double decker on/off tour buses with the recorded guide and a set of headphones is the way to go. We did it in Frankfurt, we did it in Singapore (which was the best!)  And now we decided to do it again in Sydney, which is a good city for walking, but a little big if you plan to see more than one-or-two things.

We got off to a slow start on New Year's Eve...that can happen sometimes if you are following your itinerary scheduled for a "day at leisure"....looking back at the photos, I now remember why we got up a little later than normal...

At the end of our long day yesterday... we had found a cool pub/restaurant about 1.5 km. from our hotel (all downhill) near the Circular Quay (which you learn very quickly is properly pronounced "KEY"!!) called Jackson's on George   From the look of their current website, it seems that are closed now for remodeling, are under new management and are due to reopen as "P.J. Gallagher's" - - and according to their Facebook page, they are already selling tickets for their rooftop New Years Eve party...and as I write this, we are not even to Thanksgiving yet! They were pushing hard to sell us tickets to the NYE party when we were there...and we may have actually considered it...for a nanosecond. They probably did have a decent view of the harbor fireworks show from their roof... but the idea of rooftop partying with 100's of 20-somethings at an "all-you-can-drink" affair had me thinking that we might be spending the night stepping over bodies and puddles of puke. NOT the way we wanted to spend the evening!!

Did I mention that the walk to Jackson's was "all downhill" ?? Well.... the walk back to the hotel was a pretty steep climb up a side-street off of George Street that actually ended with three flights of stairs to the terrace from where we could enter the Shangri La. But all was not lost...we stopped for a nightcap at the homey little pub called Hart's Pub which was located just before the last set of stairs to "home"!! No wonder we got a slow start the next morning!

Some photos of Jackson's are in the beginning of the "Sydney Double Deck Bus Tour" Facebook album (see ink at bottom)

So...once we got ourselves together and got out the door... off we went on "walkabout"... we stopped at a Starbucks near the harbor (another thing we have learned about traveling together is that everything goes better with Starbucks!)...and not too far from where Jackson's was located, we found a double-decker bus-stop and bought us a pair of daily on/off tickets. The bus took a zig-zag route through the city ... we took a few photos but mostly we got on and off to go to some very cool old malls...and I did some shopping for some shirts and shorts...

The bus took us over to "Dawes Point" which is the place where people were already beginning to gather to get the best free-spots to watch the fireworks show from. Our hotel had become like an armed encampment... you had to show your room-key at the front door to the lobby....and very soon, they would be enforcing the "no outside alcohol" rule... so we bought several bottles of good champagne and snuck them up to the room when we were done with all of our shopping.

Of course, our constant companion for the day was "Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy"... the little stuffed scruffy-black dog that we had picked up back in Port Douglas...I guess we were starting to miss Beloved (aka The Bee - our Lhasa Apso) who was back at home in Hyderabad staying with our driver, Krishna. Hairy has his very own set of photos below.

By far one of the best parts of taking the double-decker bus tour of any city...are the pub-scouting possibilities you have from the upper-deck. While touring, we passed "The Oldest Pub in Sydney" (so they claim - there seems to be some controversy over who has been there longer with the pub right next-door - the "First Fleet Bar and Bistro")  which is now known as  The Fortune of War  We had a few pints while talking to one f the locals (very easy to do in a Sydney Pub!)

It was time to head back to the hotel and get inside before the big fireworks show.

Of course this was not before one more fateful stop at Hart's Pub. Did I mention that we had a couple of pints at the Fortune of War? Well that was followed by a bit of pub-grub and some number of pints to follow. We chatted with a few more of the locals (one of whom was a female bartender who was from California! Or maybe she said New Jersey. Whatever!) The walk up the last few flights of stairs was memorable. I think. I really don't remember.

As has happened every New Year's Eve since we got married 15-years ago... we didn't make it to midnight.

Well....we did. Sort of. Sydney's fireworks spectacular is so incredible, that they do it twice. There's the "kid's show" at 9:30 P.M. Which we both watched from the big picture window in our hotel room. And it was incredible... with the Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background... it was one of the greatest fireworks shows I had ever seen!!

We toasted the New Year about two-hours early...which is normal for us....and Amy crawled into bed and went fast to sleep.  I nay have closed my eyes for a bit as well...but luckily I heard the first of the midnight fireworks at the moment they first started. I woke Amy up and said "You have to see this!! This is it...the big one!!" We watched the whole show.... gave a quick "Yaaaay!" and both closed the day off with a final glass of champagne.

Here endeth a very, very long day!

Stay tuned for Part Three.... and the FINAL blog-post on our Australian adventure coming tomorrow!!

Sydney Double Deck Bus Tour

It's Hairy Maclary From Donaldson's Dairy

Pub Crawl and Fireworks

At Last....Sydney!! (Part One of Three)

I think that anybody who watches the television broadcasts of the various "New Years Celebrations" from around the world is familiar with the sights and sound of the mammoth fireworks spectacular at Sydney Harbor. We had finally arrived in Sydney. This was the "reason" for the trip (although, as I have often said ...if you have nothing in mind but the "destination", you have missed the point of the "journey".) The blessings of being here "on the other side of the world" have been countless...but having the ability to travel and see as many places we have since we arrived in India in 2010 is just priceless. The great author of "Brave New World" and disciple of Swami Vivekananda, Aldous Huxley, once said that "To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries." Amen to that!!

We got a cool ride to our hotel from a limo driver who had a right-hand-drive conversion Cadillac Escalade... he said that the conversion cost $10,000.00 USD... he has to get a lot of airport runs to make that investment pay off! He dropped us off at our hotel...the Shangri La Sydney (make sure to click on this link and you will see what an amazing view this place has!) We had scrimped on some other things along the way on this trip... but the HARBOR VIEW room was not on of them. Looking out our window...the Sydney Harbor Bridge was to the left, the harbor right below us...and the iconic Sydney Opera House was off to the right. It was simply the most spectacular view you can imagine. I think the only better view in the entire city might be from the top of the bridge, and that was something Amy got to see on New Year's Day (that's the photo above left!)

We pretty much had some wine, some dinner and we were done. I checked the Internet to see about getting tickets to see the Australian Cricket professional league game (Called The Big Bash) on Sunday night, December 30th  ... both the Sydney Thunder and the Sydney Sixers were in town to play each other...and we had been invited to look up our basketball-playing friends (The Minnesota Twins) that we met on Kangaroo Island. I found tickets...but I also found out that the stadium was about as unreachable as anything in the city...possibly an hour by taxi and at least that long by train. We never did catch up with our BFF's. We needed to be up before dawn...so we snuggled up in the big comfy bed for the night.

In the EARLY morning of the following day ... we grabbed a taxi to take us to the Sydney Opera House for a very cool backstage-tour of the inside of this wonderful building. Taking a taxi was overkill...it was really a short walk and we did it a number of times afterwards! Seeing the outside of the opera house is pretty special. But seeing the inside? Really amazing stuff. Our guide was just a trip!! An extremely knowledgeable young man who worked the sound systems at the Opera House... and - he was a dwarf. Made for an interesting morning to be sure...followed by a great breakfast. Our guide was nice enough to also escort us over to the boat-launce where we would catch a water-taxi to the wonderful Taronga Zoo on the other side of Sydney Harbor.

Here are our photos from our first Sydney album on Facebook:

We Made It To Sydney!!

Next was a full day at the aforementioned Taronga Zoo. Now...I'm not much for zoos usually...I prefer to see my animals in the wild as we did on our African Safari. But I have to say that this one was one of the nicest I have ever been to... It was going to be another warm day... and there was going to be a ton of walking. The staff could not have been more helpful (even when we were not sue how our tickets worked ... they came as a package-deal with the Opera House Tour and it was a little confusing...but they got us sorted out. We had a great guide, too... a very cool and friendly young Aussie woman... kind of like "Crocodile Dorthy".  The highlights, as usual, were the petting zoo....and going into the "kitchen" where all of the various foods were prepared for the animals. Although I did think we might lose poor Amy Suzanne when she saw the frozen baby chicken and all of the frozen baby mice that the snakes liked so much...

Here's a couple of snapshots of THAT event!

Snake food - - frozen baby chicken

Oh my God!!! 

Here are the rest of the photos from our day at the zoo.... afterwards we took the much bigger ferry-boat  back to the other shore - walked around the Opera House again, got a cup of Starbucks...and called it a day. Tomorrow we would take a full-day double-decker bus tour of the whole city!

The Taronga Zoo in Sydney

Into the Rain Forest - Make sure there's plenty of beer!!

Another shrimp off the barbie !!

After our day in the water snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef ... the next day would be spent on land. But it was so humid, you would have thought we were back UNDER water. I've been in cooler, less muggy hotel steam-baths! Now we would be heading into uncharted territory...and - admittedly - the one part of our journey that I had not researched at all - so there were truly no real expectations on what the day would hold. Again - it was a shared-van excursion.... our guide-slash-driver picked us up in a Range Rover in the morning. We stopped at another small hotel in Port Douglas and picked up a family of four....mom, dad, brother and sister. I think they were from England if my memory is correct. Nice folks...again - the non-private touring we were doing in Australia was paying off.

Today we would be heading into the Daintree Rainforest... across the bay from Port Douglas.

The Daintree Rainforest is a tropical rainforest on the north east coast of Queensland, Australia, north of Mossman and Cairns. At around 1,200 km² (460 sq mi) the Daintree is the largest continuous area of tropical rainforest on the Australian continent. Along the coastline north of the Daintree River, tropical rainforest grows right down to the edge of the sea.

Our guide for the day could have walked right out of central-casting for Crocodile Dundee...a real "True Blue Fair Dinkum Aussie Bloke" is what he called himself...and what a character. He told some interesting stories about the area and seemed to love his job. That always makes a difference... if your guide is having a good time, the tour is better. But then again, everybody in Australia seems to be out to pass a good time...so there you have it. 

The Daintree is hot and humid... but because of that... it is very, very green. And thick. Rainforest is the modern-day term for this kind of place... but as a kid I would have called it "a jungle"...and as I mentioned earlier... the forest grows right to the sandy shoreline. Definitely a unique place. We made several stops along the way... on the beach, at a little out of the way pub (again, right out of the scenery-storage-locker for Crocodile Dundee). We tried our hand at trying to get some proper sounds out of a didgeridoo (without much success). We took a pretty long hike in the forest...and that was pretty intense. The humidity was really up there - - and I felt like a wet dishrag most of the time we were walking (see photo below)

Help me! I'm melting!! 

Our stop for a late lunch was a touristy place with decent food, good wine and a petting-zoo full of kangaroos and wallabies... always fun to visit with the 'roos. A few more stops along the way....and then to the highlight of the day...a boat cruise on the river to look for crocodiles. It wasn't too hard to spot them... they were all over in the shallow water along the banks of the river.... the boat guide was a pretty funny guy and the time went pretty quickly. But we had had a long day and we were getting pretty tired. It was good news to hear that we would be making the hour-and-a-half drive back to our hotel in Port Douglas. That was it for us...

After a nice hot shower, we went out to dinner at a place that was a few miles walk down the main-drag in town. Again....we walked. We sat at a table next to the sidewalk and there were no windows.... the sound of the cicadas in the tree outside was really loud... The meal was decent.... we saw the producer guy from New York and he was going to some club after. But we had it in our mind to go to the "world famous" (or so they say!) Iron Bar to see the Cane Toad Races. Yes...cane toads are these huge toads that have few natural enemies and are really a problem in Australia... the buggers are everywhere. Here is a link with a short video about the cane toad racing at the Iron Bar ... as you can see.... the "toad jockeys" use party-favor blowers to get their toads to jump...and the lucky few have to kiss their toads for good luck!! And that was the end of our very, very, very long day.

The next day was "at our leisure" - - actually three little words that you hope to see a lot of on your travel itinerary. The day before took a lot more out of me than I had thought. My sciatica was bothering me from all the walking....and we didn't have a driver for the day....so - we ended up walking some more.  We decided to walk up to the harbor where our boat was docked....to do a little shopping along the main street...and have a late lunch at a place we had seen on our snorkeling day that looked pretty interesting and fun. Along the way... we stopped at a book store where we picked up our "mascot" for the rest of the trip... a book and little stuffed dog that came as a package-deal... a local favorite -- Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy.  He was to be our constant companion for the rest of the trip!

The mall was fun...Amy bought her "stinger suit" and some shoes...and we had an amazing lunch of cold Victoria Bitters beer and these giant shrimp (see the photo above!)  We walked back to the hotel and napped....then ventured out one last time for some good food and beer. We had had our eye on this little place that served Mexican food... but they had a sign that said that they were closed and they never opened. We got back to the hotel one last time...did some laundry for the last time... and got re-packed for our next stop... beautiful Sydney for the New Year's Eve celebration.

All in all...Port Douglas far exceeded all expectations... just writing this has brought back some terrific memories...and I am glad I had the chance to share them with all of you...

Stay tuned... next... on to Sydney!!

Here is an album of photos from my Facebook page that contains over 100 snapshots of our final two days in Port Douglas, Australia:

Daintree Rain Forest and Port Douglas