Australia Part 2

So, I have to admit that from here on in may not be that exciting to read because I relatively quickly got into a pattern which, although great fun for me, doesn't necessarily make fascinating prose.

Anyhow, I got off the plane in Sydney at about 9 in the morning, and headed through customs and immigration. I picked up my bag with no trouble and headed to the information desk for some information. I asked if they just booked hotels or if they could help me find a hostel as well. I had decided to stay at a hostel because it would cost so much less, thereby saving enough money to hopefully be able to head up to Cairns for some scuba. Well, the lady pointed me to a wall of brochures and booklets. You know those lighted boards with phones you find at airports where there is a picture of different hotels and the phone only dials those hotels? Well, there were a couple of those for hostels in the Sydney airport and I quickly spotted the ad for the hostels I had found through the internet. The rooms, as I remembered, were only about $15 dollars per night if you stayed in a dorm room, and considering the Australian dollar is only worth about $0.75, even with the weak dollar we have now in the States, that's pretty cheap. I rang them up and they were kind enough to inform me that they only had rooms for the next two nights, unless I wanted to stay for ten nights.

Now, think about that. They ONLY had rooms for the next two nights, or the next ten nights. How does that work? Oh, and if you chose the ten night deal you got the super special New Year's Price of $350 for ten nights! Look above and compare that to the price I found online. Yeah, it's their New Year's rate! So many people come to Sydney for New Years that they have no trouble renting out every possible bed in the place at a higher rate than normal. Well, I needed a place to stay so I decided to do the ten night New Year's deal thinking I might still be able to swing the scuba if I was a little more thrifty for a couple days. Heck, this place had a kitchen so maybe I could make my own food a couple of nights. Who knows?

So, they sent a shuttle to pick me up, I finally arrived, checked in, and headed to my room. It was cozy, and by cozy I mean extremely hot with four bunk beds in it, two on each side of the room. There was a fan that seemed to be cooling the area directly in front of it for about 7 inches, and a wide corridor between the beds that was at least two and a half feet wide. A window in the wall opposite the door looked out upon some buildings and as I walked to it I felt pretty good. This was a kind of adventure after all.

Even though there were a total of eight beds in the room, only one of them had any belongings on it. I chose a bottom bunk near the window, opposite the bed my only roommate had chosen, probably for the same reasons. Then I headed out for a walk. This was where I did most of my sightseeing in Sydney, the very first day. I have, of course, tossed the photos I took that day up on the photo site, so here's a bit of an explanation.

You will see the Anzac Memorial, which is a war memorial that I believe honors Australian soldiers who gave their lives in France. Treasure these pictures since, as you may be able to read on the sign, you are not allowed to take pictures in the memorial without specific permission. So, I was only able to snap a few before I was told to stop.
Then, you'll see a statue of a kangaroo and an emu. This was on the outside of a building. That's it. I never even figured out what the building was. But it looked cool...
I also strolled through the Royal Botanic Gardens which are right next to the Sydney Opera House. I was surprised to see dozens of bats actively out in the middle of the day, and I got at least one decent action shot here. I read a sign explaining that as cool as the bats are, they are apparently damaging the trees, so the park service there is currently trying to convince them to leave nicely. There were no details as to how they are doing this.
Since I was right there, I also walked around the Sydney Opera House and took some shots of that. I know it looks big in pictures, but in real life it's HUGE. And it sits right on the harbor so I got some pics of that, including the Harbor Bridge, which is nicknamed the 'coat hanger' because it kind of looks like a coat hanger. I guess no one bothered to explain to the Australians that it looks like a hundred other bridges and that any number of cities around the world would therefore be justified in using the same nickname if they were so inclined, which they likely would not be since there are so many bridges that look like that. But whatever.

There's also a bar and grill right there on the harbor, which gave me a chance to relax and drink a nice, cold beer while looking out over the water as the warm summer sun beat down upon me. As I watched the boats float past and reveled in the 35 degree (Celsius) temperature, I though about how cold it must be in Japan at that moment and realized that THIS is what vacation is all about.