Australia Part 6

After a few a couple days hitting various establishments in Sydney which coincidentally sold beer, it became New Year's Eve. Scott and I had asked a few locals (only a few, because it's surprisingly hard to find an Australian in Sydney near New Years) and the consensus was that we should go wherever we were going early. Really early. With no real plan we eventually decided on the most obvious spot in the city: the Opera House. With a great view of the harbor and of course the Harbor Bridge how could we go wrong?

So, we headed down there after having some breakfast/lunch on New Year's Eve to see how crowded it was getting and there were already a couple hundred people settled in. This was at about noon. We found a good spot with a light pole to lean against and laid out our blanket, preparing for the wait. Didn't really think this through and after about an hour of simply sitting there in the scorching heat of the midday Sydney sun we began to realize how poorly we had planned for this. Now, because so many people go there at New Year's they close off the gates once it gets too full. Residents of Sydney can get special passes allowing them in even once the gates are closed, but for those of us visiting we just have to get there early and stay there. Still, by 1 PM I was willing to risk it. I left Scott to guard our spot and headed to a nearby convenience store where I grabbed some bottled water, a deck of cards, and some sunblock. The sunblock was ludicrously expensive but was probably the most important thing I bought. SPF 20 and we slathered it on repeatedly and I STILL got people noticing how much sun I got over a week later when I got back to Japan. And it was all from this day.

So, it's maybe 1 - 1:30 PM. The sun doesn't set until after 8 PM. There was a small fireworks show at 9:30 for the kiddies and then the big one at midnight. So we sat there and played cards. And played cards. We invented a game. It sucked. But we still played it a few times. I taught him, like, 4 card games. We played Go Fish for crying out loud. I mean, you almost looked forward to needing to use the toilet even though you'd have to wait in line because it meant doing SOMETHING.

Around 6 or 7 we began to notice people gathering on the 2nd story terrace of the Opera House. This turned out to be a wedding ceremony. Can you imagine having your wedding on New Year's Eve in Sydney in front of about 3000 people? Well, someone did. Seemed like a nice ceremony too. When the groom kissed the bride people cheered and clapped. Hope it made him feel good because I'm guessing someone paid a pretty penny for that.

Sometime after 11 PM some Australian woman introduced herself to us. She seemed nice and had apparently taken a liking to Scott. However, when it turned out she had had her eye on us for several hours ("Did you enjoy your card game? Man, you sure seemed to win more than him!") we were a little weirded out. Still, she was nice. Her British friend came over to distract me so the Aussie could chat up Scott. Of course, the Brit started making claims about how great the fireworks were going to be and how they would outdo anything we could do in America and I could just forget about Disney and blah blah blah.

So, midnight comes and the fireworks go off and they're great and all. I mean, I've seen some pretty spectacular fireworks shows and to be honest the ones they do in Disneyworld are pretty awesome. And they do those every single day. There was this big silver ball on the bridge and we had been waiting all day (ALL DAY!) to see what it would do. It went down a little bit. That was it. Turned out it hadn't worked. It was supposed to spin around and shoot off more fireworks or something but it didn't work. So, after all was said and done and it was obvious that it hadn't worked right I couldn't help but turn to the Brit and say, "You know, in America, our balls work." I know, I know, but how often do you have a setup like that? Huh?

Then it was off to a bar for a few drinks. Actually just one. The sun had sapped our strength over the course of those 8 hours and we weren't prepared for any real partying. So, we headed somewhere which had a live band. They played (you guessed it) cover songs of American rock music. I mean, these guys did Sweet Home Alabama. Then, near the end of the set, the singer starts wishing people a Happy New Year. "Happy New Year to the Australians! Happy New Year to the Brits! Happy New Year to New Zealanders!" He did several countries but there was one country conspicuously missing. Can you guess which one?

Then it was off to bed and back to my lunch-movie-dinner-bar hopping schedule.