Sydney Finale... Now it's 2013! (Part Three of Three)

Hey! We made it! It's 2013! Happy New Year! Well....I'm almost eleven months late with that greeting... but better late than never, right?? We actually have a deadline now...and Amy Suzanne would like to see this blog completely up-to-date by the time we pack up and leave Hyderabad for good. In June of next year, when we will be closing this FANTASTIC, INCREDIBLE, AMAZING chapter of our lives... and we will be heading to...(wait for it...think ultimate culture shock!)...Salt Lake City, Utah!!

Time Out! I need to take a brief pause here. It is sometimes hard to believe that we actually left out home back in Pasadena, California on the 30th of May 2010. I wrote my first post in this blog on the 13th of March, 2010. We have now been in India for 3-years, 5-months and 26-days. The third extensions of our original Indian visas expire in just 157-days 8-hours and 30-minutes! I would not change a single minute of any of it!

Anyway, we have reached our final day of our Australian adventure. Our last day in Sydney was here...and it was to be probably the best New Year's Day...ever. We got another slow start (like most lazy New Year's Days)... we threw a few things into "organized piles of chaos" and had the suitcases on the floor...it was a pretty good start to just separate out our "cleans-from-our-dirties" and put all of our Australian souvenirs in one big stack on a couple of chairs. One thing was for certain...we were not going to spend the last day of our vacation lounging around the hotel room...it was an absolutely gorgeous day outside (just look at the sky in the photo of Amy in front of the Sydney Opera House, above!) ... so we decided to "go walkabout"!

No day on vacation can start without a trip to the local Starbucks as long as there's one available. I broke with tradition...normally, no matter how hot it is outside, I get a hot cup of coffee. Usually some sort of cinnamon or (in the U.S.) a pumpkin-spice latte. I never developed the taste for "iced coffee"...although Amy likes it quite a lot ... It was really much too hot this New Year's Day to have anything hot...so I had my very first "Mocha  Frappuccino®" ever ... and with whipped cream, no less! Is this what I have been missing all these years?? Damn! I have some serious catching up to do!!

We walked down the waterfront of Circular Quay and started some serious people-watching. We heard some wild music... a couple of street-musicians and pick-up bands playing the didgeridoo.. a wild man doing unicycle and fire-juggling tricks... an one very strange-looking local fellow dressed something like a cross between the Statue of Liberty and the Tin Woodsman from the Land of Oz. How appropriate. "Oz". Get it??We certainly weren't the only people to decide to go walking on the harbor waterfront that morning...I'm pretty sure all of the various cruise ships docked alongside the Quay had let their passengers off the boat for the day...and the ferry-boats taking people back and forth across the bay were packed...both going and coming from the docks.

From the area by the Opera House we had some incredible last views of the harbor...(see the photo album link, below) But nothing like what Amy was going to see later.

Sydney Walkabout...

You see, after much internal wrestling - she came to a decision. We ould definitely not be coming back this way ever again...so it was a "now-or-never" thing. She had decided, on her own, to make the famous "Sydney Bridge Climb" on New Year's Night! Now for more reasons than I can list..this is something that I would never do...my incredible fear of heights being the most serious one. But she had made up her mind...and that's what she wanted to do!  She made her reservations and we got back to the hotel room to have a little rest before her big climb!

After the sun went down... she got pretty nervous...but she was really excited. There was no chance she was going to walk over to the entrance to the bridge alone....I went along for moral-support. Inside the building, there was a snack-shop and a place to buy t-shits and pictures and video mementos of "your big climb".... After a big hug (and me telling her how proud I was of her!)...off she went to the upstairs holding area where everybody gets a jumpsuit (come to think of it...that's a terrible way to describe the overalls they give you for the climb...a "jump" suit... Oh, well. They gave her (and everybody on the climb) a safety harness and a breathalyzer test ....

I watched from down below until she actually entered the superstructure of the bridge.

She did it. She did the Bridge Climb!! She says it was a little windy, a little scary, definitely a good workout,,,and that he views were...unbelievable!

She was just elated when she came back to the hotel.  They gave her a little flash-drive with her photos on it...and she couldn't wait to plug it in and show me. Yes...I was very proud of her...but so glad I didn't even consider trying to do it. There was no way I could have done what she did!

Our Australian adventure had truly come to a climactic end! We would leave in the morning for the airport and our first-leg flight back home through Kuala Lumpur and back Home to Hyderabad.

We leave you with some of the photos from Amy's bridge climb. I hope you have enjoyed this ten-part series of posts on our Aussie Adventure. Honestly...I never thought it would take ten-full-chapters to tell the tales...but it was truly a trip for the ages!! Thanks for reading!

Sydney Skyline

Amy (best photo!)

Amy at the top!!

Far above our hotel room!

Now that's a look I understand!

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