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sydney explorer bus After a fourteen hour flight to get here both Hope and I slept better than we had in days. Oddly enough I woke up fifteen minutes before the alarm went off and started the day without a second thought. Any hint of jet lag was completely absent. Actually I'm not even sure that it ever existed for me. Breakfast was my first objective of the day. I was going to need some food in me before I could do anything else. We opted for the continental breakfast at the hotel and ate as much as we could. As far as I could see there wasn't anything exotic in the food selection with all of the fruit being recognizable. Hope did find a packet of Vegemite to spread on toast, but she passed on that idea. After breakfast we left the hotel in search of a local banking machine. We had been told by the hotel desk that there was one located just a few blocks down the street, but I think that we went in the wrong direction before we finally found it. The walk did give us a good look at the neighborhood though. When we were driven from the airport to the hotel, we really couldn't see that much at night. For the most part the immediate area around the hotel seemed to be residential with a local technical college occupying a few square blocks down the street from the hotel. Students with backpacks were seen going to class as we walked past compact apartments with tiny balconies. It all seemed very familiar and friendly. I couldn't make up my mind if the facade of wooden shutters and iron railings reminded me more of Paris or New Orleans. ... For being the start of autumn here, the weather was mild. Blue sky gave us plenty of sun and just a hint of a breeze. With a folded up map in my pocket, the two of us made our way to the nearest bus stop. Now the bus that we rode wasn't the local bus. Instead it was something called the Sydney Explorer Bus and was painted red to make it stand out more from the city buses. My brother and I had used a similar concept when we in London last year. The basic idea behind the bus is simple. Hope and I were issued passes that allowed us to ride the bus at anytime. The bus itself had twenty-six different stops located throughout the city near some of the major attractions. It was entirely up to us where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see. All that we had to do was show up at the posted times just like a regular bus. According to the chart at the stop, the bus came by at fifteen minute intervals. Since neither of us wore a watch, we had no idea how long we might have to wait at each stop. This became tiresome after a while, but we dealt with it and watched the traffic speed by on the street. Hope kept commenting on the speed and closeness of the cars, but for me it seemed very much like London with the exception of the surrounding trees and street signs. People driving on the left side of the road was nothing new for me. So far everything was going very smoothly. Then we made our first small mistake. Our bus approached the stand, stopped and then pulled away. I had thought that the other people standing next to us were going to board first, but they didn't. It seems that they were waiting for a regular city bus. Sigh. What this meant is that we got to wait for another bus to come by and pick us up. Thankfully it wasn't that embarassing. ... Oh, I have forgotten to mention one small but funny detail. Hope ever the one to make a fashion statement was wearing her pair of sandals that she had just bought for the trip. It didn't matter that she had five band aids on each foot from wearing them one time at home, she was still going to wear them. Looking good it seems is more important than comfort. The bus itself was modern and comfortable. Even better was the fact that it wasn't packed when we boarded. ... Our first stop on the circuit was the Sydney Aquarium. Even though I had been to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago more than once, I wanted to see what Sydney had to offer. Both of us were impressed by what we saw and would recommend it to anyone who goes to Sydney. They do a wonderful job of presentation. Somehow they managed to construct these acrylic tunnels where the creatures can swim over and around the people as they walk through them. There wasn't just one tunnel either. There were three of them. Sharks, turtles and rays were all around us. Personal favorites were the Port Jackson sharks and the highly camouflaged Wobbegong sharks. Hope said that they looked as though they were covered with a paisley design and I'd have to agree. Now maybe California and Florida have aquariums just as nice as the one that we saw, but I don't know since I've never been to one of them in either place. Besides the exhibits themselves there was something else to gawk at while we were there. Japanese schoolgirls were everywhere. I thought that I was caught in a Sailor Moon universe. Hope however said that she thought that she was in a Pokemon cartoon. All of the girls were dressed in the cliche outfit of a gold buttoned blazer, pleated skirt and knee highs. At first I thought that it was funny, if not slightly perverse, but by the time that we left the aquarium I was getting tired of listening to them run and shout. ... After the aquarium we made our way back to the bus. Our next stop was the famous harbor itself. We disembarked at Campbell's Cove and made our way along the shore to the Opera House. The weather along the harbor was perfect. It wasn't too hot or too cold and we walked at a leisurely pace taking pictures as went. Naturally both the bridge and the Opera House seemed smaller to me in person. This always seems to happen to me when I travel. The mental picture tends to be more grand than reality. Despite that fact it was still worthwhile to see both famous icons. After the Opera House we wandered through the adjoining Royal Botanic Gardens. I have to pause here to comment on the Sydneysiders themselves. They as a group seem to be a very fit people. I don't know how many people we saw jogging as we walked through the gardens. There was even a small group of people doing some vigorous form of martial arts training. Once again maybe this is quite common in the parks of other major cities, but I was still impressed. What was even more odd was that the only person that I saw smoking in the garden was a tourist. From the gardens we made our way to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. When I went to Europe last year I visited a number of museums and I wanted to see what Australia had to offer. Now I have to confess that I couldn't name one Australian artist before I went to the museum. In all of the art history courses that I took as an undergraduate not one of them mentioned Australian art. About as close as we came would be Asian art and that isn't the same thing. Before I left home I had read that there had been a major art movement in Australia with special attention given to watercolors of the landscape. For me what I enjoyed the most was the black and white photography of Max Dupain. Very sharp contrast with focus on form and composition. After the museum food was our next objective, because after all of that walking I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. While we had been in the museum it had started to rain so we decided to use the bus rather than walk in our search for food. While we were waiting for our bus, this mentally impaired man started talking to us. He was friendly enough, but I think that he made both my sister and me feel a little odd. Between his accent and slurred speech he was hard to understand and as my sister pointed out he had drool coming out one side of his mouth. Then when he started to shout at some of his friends driving by, we couldn't wait for the bus to arrive. ... Kings Cross, the bohemian part of Sydney, was where we decided to eat. After walking around for a while we eventually found a small deli type of place in between the sex shops and novelty stores. A huge slice of pizza and a soda was enough for me as watched the rain come down harder and harder. The rain didn't bother us, because by that time we had already had a fairly full day and were ready to just relax. Hope was disappointed by one thing though. If we would have been there on Friday we could have seen a drag show while we ate soup and sandwiches. Having been to Amsterdam last year, most red light districts don't phase me. They serve a purpose and I find them slightly amusing. After we ate we made our way to an internet cafe to write family and friends. I wasn't very impressed by the speed of the connection, but an hour's worth of time cost the same as mailing out two postcards and got a faster response. Then as we were waiting for our bus once again, we got a taste of some local color. A fight broke out within twenty yards of where we were standing and a crowd instantly gathered to watch. Hope and I couldn't get a closer look as our bus was approaching. All that we could hear was some shouting and what sounded like broken glass. Hope guessed that it might have been a bottle, but we never did find out as we hopped back onto the bus and headed back to the hotel. As the bus slowly wove its way through the rain and rush hour traffic, both of us got more and more tired. Thankfully the rain had stopped by the time that we reached our stop. After a visit to the local convenience store for some bottled water, we were back in our hotel room. Just sitting on our beds made us tired and we were asleep by eight-thirty.
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