April 28th: Hello Sydney!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Our first day in Sydney. Busy busy day.
I learned that putting orajel on bug bites at 2am….doesn’t do jack.
We didn’t actually leave the hotel until 8:50, walking through Hyde Park and another park to get to the wharf. The parks were gorgeous. Very Boston Gardens. Big fountains though, as well as the big ANZAC memorial. And then all of a sudden we rounded the curve, and BAM. There was the Sydney Opera house. It was really really weird. Just right there in front of me, something more iconic than the Eiffel Tower even. Its like, it hasn’t hit us that we are in Sydney. Australia.
We took some pictures of the bridge an the Opera house as the ferry passed right by them, but the half hour ferry ride seemed to take forever before we arrived in Manly.
There was some “Do we or don’t we” drama about the Q Station, but it was resolved, and we wandered downtown Manly to kill some time. We happened to pass an amazing looking deli that had rolls in the front window that Tim couldn’t pass up. We got one shell roll to share, and it was ooey and gooey and perfect. Something about Southern Hemisphere bread. Can’t be beat.
We picked up another man along the way on the shuttle, and the Santalike driver and him had a more personal conversation, including the statement, “A fine filly suggested we have lunch….of course it will be dutch.” It was beyond adorable. We were a full hour early, so we walked down the dock outside, saw lots of schools of fish swimming totally erratically, it was quite strange. We were the only ones on the tour, and our guide seemed very scattered. She told us all about the healing powers of the Quarantine Station, and that was really the only time she was very animated. It was weird though, it was a government facility, used all the way through 1984, and yet, they keep saying they know very little about it. Like where certain buildings were, and other pieces of information that should have been well documented since it was a government institution. It was just very strange. There were buildings and rooms that she said were still in the exact condition that they were left in, and yet, she didn’t have a key and couldn’t show us on the tour? It was just odd. Its like the concentration is solely on the Ghost Tours and Spa Hotel services (90% of the buildings had been turned into resorts and spas and such buildings) and not at all on people that want the actual history of the place. We did get to go into the shower rooms, where they showered in a carcogenic material, the hospital (part of which had been rebuilt since it burned down earlier this decade), saw where the tram up the hill was, the boiler and generator room has been turned into a bar. She was clearly into the sacred grounds of it, a decent enough guide, just a bit looney.
We walked all the way down the Corso and got to the Manly Beach at the end. Beautiful beach, long too.
It was relaxing to watch the ocean and the beach, there were a ton of people still out on the beach considering it was the middle of a work day too. On the way back through, we stopped in all of the clothing shops, which I don’t know if it was a good idea or not. We both could have spent thousands of dollars. Roxy, Billabong, Element….all were absolutely fantastic and I wanted everything. Tim wanted everything. But everything was so expensive. Like, more expensive than the States, which makes no sense since this is the country of origin! It was just obnoxious to try on the sweaters or a jacket or shirt and then have it be over $100. Because this is the clothing that we will never see anywhere near us in the states. Ever. Because its too much out of the Midwest fashion schema
Bought our dinner (our first night of the ever famous Chicken Tikka Masala) and back to the ferry to take us back to Sydney. I could have easily fallen asleep. I was sleepy and comfortable, the gentle rocking and breeze. Just give me something to lean on, and I would have been out. We hauled our load all the way back to the hotel and I was super sick of walking by the time we got back, but it didn’t help that we saw two grocery stores close to the hotel when we had just hauled four bags from Manly.
Things got reorganized and we left for our Ghost tour. Walked all the way back down to Cadman’s Cottage, We got checked in, and while standing in line realized that we were not the only Americans on this tour. Ghost Guide proceeded to hand out props to everyone, giving everyone a character to play at some point in the night. The props were somewhat large, and you wore them around your neck on a lanyard. Tim and I tried to avoid getting one, but then it was clear that he was going to pass them out until everyone had one. Somehow, he finished giving everyone one, and started the tour, only I still hadn’t gotten one. I was the only one off the hook. Only minutes into the tour, I was bored. It seemed to never end. I was hungry and tired almost right away as it started, and I hoped that I would get so enthralled with the stories and the tour that I would forget that my feet hurt and I was hungry. Not even halfway through I was ready to leave. Just chuck the prop at him and leave. Or hand it (and our self wound flashlight) to someone else and scram. We paid for it, we could tough it out, plus, maybe it would get better as it went on? His delivery of the decent stories was awful. I also saw more cockroaches in the tour than I have in my entire life. Also two dead rats. Too many pauses, stuttered and stumbled like he didn’t remember the stories. He seemed very unprepared or just flat dumb because he would stop mid sentence. His pausing style was absolutely awful.
But it finally ended, and there was a big hubaloo about finding the main part of the city again to take the train back to the hotel, but they dropped us off in nowhere and we kept getting stuck in sketchy dead ends.
Finally, chicken masala touched our lips, and life was whole again. ☺