Sydney day 1 - Walking

I left off the last blog post with us packed into a room for some sleep. The room wasn't too bad, as it did have a bunkbed and a third bed, so no one was on the floor. It was about one-thirty in the morning when we were finally able to get to sleep. I slept pretty good, and woke up to my phone ringing. It was my darling wife calling me to see what was going on. It was about 10am, which is checkout time here, so it worked out.

I went to the desk, and they let us stay in the room until we could check into the rooms I booked at 2pm. That was pretty cool of them, so I decided to walk around and see what we could see. We are in North Sydney, and close to the bridge and harbor. Doing a little exploring found some good places to get pictures, and I took them.

Pictures can be found on my facebook page. You can go there here:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=516042032&ref=profile
I will be putting up pictures shortly as the trip progresses.

We got back and moved into the rooms around 2pm. We each got a single room, and the rate was pretty good. We all took time to unwind, and then we gathered in my room to book the flight/hotel for Cairns. We decided we would leave there on Tuesday, and will stay there for a week. Everything is booked, so we shouldn't have the issue we had our first night in Sydney.

When we finished that, we decided to go into Sydney. We walked over to the bridge/train station area, and decided to walk the bridge. This was pretty cool because you could get some good pictures of the Opera House. Unfortunatly, it was getting to be night time, so it was harder to get good pictures.

We walked across the bridge and through 'The Rocks' area. Not much to say about that because we were looking for a place to eat. We wound up eating at this place in the Circular Quay, which is an inlet between The Rocks and where the Opera House is. It was called City Extra, and was pretty good food, even if it was a little pricey.

From there, we went to the Opera House, and it was pretty impressive, even in the dark. You could see a flock of bats swarming around one of the peaks of the roof, but I couldn't get a good picture of it, and I tried a lot. From there, we walked through the center of Sydney to Hyde Park, and the war memorial for the Anzac troops that fought in World War I. Very cool, and I would like to go in the daytime to see it better.

After that, we walked east to Kings Cross, because Franck heard that it was the happening place with clubs and such. So we walked there, and it had clubs all right. However, they were strip clubs, and we weren't interested, so we walked by. We walked north on that little penninsula until we had to turn around and we found what appeared to be the Naval yards.
It was cool to see the ships, but again, not good lighting for pictures. We then walked back and across the Botanical Gardens to get back to the Circular Quay. By this time, we are all pretty tired, and have to go to the bathroom. So less looking around, and more moving with a purpose. We got to the quay and found some bathrooms. Then we started back across the bridge to our rooms.

As you can see, the main theme of this day was walking. I think we left around five-thirty or so in the evening, and didn't get back until nearly eleven-thirty. Except for the hour at the restaurant, we were pretty much walking. I couldn't estimate distance, but it wasn't a short jaunt. As Franck put it, if someone told him that was our plan, no way. But it was pretty interesting and worth it in the end. Especially after pretty much sitting on a plane for so long the day before.

Now it is day two, and our plans are to see some of the sights during the day. I want to see the botanical garden, and maybe do a little shopping for clothes. We fly tomorrow in the afternoon for Cairns, so this is really our only full day in Sydney. We will probably have a day or two before our flight back on the 31st.

That is about it for now. Hope you enjoyed my words. If not, that is fine. This is also for my own reasons so I can reference them later on.

Until next time....