Sydney Again

Sydney, Last full day:

We begin with a reluctant 4:00AM wakeup, then another 4:15 re-wake-up for the boys... and we are driving out of the Alassio parking garage by 4:45.  We drive down the Highway to the Cairns airport, drop off the rental, check our bags, and grab some coffee from an airport "Skybury" Coffee stand. Ariel gets a latte with a nice heart shape in the foam.  I order a chai for $4.00 which tastes like weak apple cider.  

We get to the gate in time for boarding, and the airline attendant is talking into a microphone, a mere four yards away, but somehow the accoustics of the hallway make everything she says completely unintelligible.  Ariel goes up to clarify, and the woman relates that she has called rows 28-40, but she will board anyone in line. We all grab our bags, but then when we get up to the front of the line, she changes her tune, and says that since we are in rows 3-5, we need to wait.  After that bit of fun, we board our Virgin Australia flight to Sydney, and are greeted by a male steward who tells everyone we are ahead of schedule and are prepped to fly 15 minutes early. We then taxi out and sit on the tarmac for 15 minutes before take-off.  I fire up the laptop and write a short program, William reads his Harry Potter book, Ariel and the other two boys try to find a comfortable enough position to catch up on sleep.

Two and a half hour later, we land in Sydney, grab our luggage, get coffee and muffins (I get a mocha this time) and we argue with the Budget rental guy about what size car we should have and how much it should cost us for one day.  Eventually we come to an accord.  

In the midst of this, Henry and JP engage in a suitcase fight, and JP's left side big toenail gets caught, bends up and starts to bleed.  It's the same toe, on the same side as the toenail I bent up shortly after we landed in Sydney a week ago.  This time I have extra bandaids handy.

After negotiations end with the Budget representative, we decide on a Holden SV6, a popular Australian car, which the rep assures us has more trunk space than the Ford.  When we go out to the garage to pick it up, the lady with the keys informs us ours is the red car.   We manage, barely, to cram all 5 suitcases in the trunk and we drive out of the airport in search of the fastest route to our hotel.

Having not clearly defined what that route looks like exactly, we quickly end up in Southern Sydney's maze of streets, with no obvious route to the Harbor Bridge.  Eventually luck smiles, and we get to familiar territory and the rest of the drive to North Ryde is smooth sailing.  We stop briefly at a mini-mart to grab some milk and cereal for breakfast. 

Ariel tells me that she heard from a local at the airport that every time there is a hurricane or flood in North Queensland, the gecko and cane-toad populations are displaced/decimated, and it takes a year or two for the populations to replenish. That explains why we had'nt seen even one this trip.

We continue to the hotel, and Ariel checks us in while we unload, we are in room 28 this time instead of 26, the only noticable difference is that we take the left walkway instead of the right. While bringing down our luggage, William spots a two-foot-long blue-tongue skink against the wall of the parking garage.  Now you're probably saturated with pictures of us petting native Australian wildlife, but seeing something like this just lying out in the open is a bit of a shock. Stuff like that just never happens back home.  I cautiously pick up the skink and check him out. He's reluctant, but docile. He's got some pretty deep scars and has a few mites near his head. I try to pull them off, but he hisses loudly, so Henry takes a few glamor shots, and we set him on his way. 

We drop off our luggage, fire up the netbook, buy 24 hours of internet time, and check the ferry schedules for the Manly Ferry. It runs every half hour, so we drive to Sydney to take a ferry ride. We've learned by now that parking in Sydney sucks, so we head up George St. to the the Rocks where we had good luck last time.  We notice the Weekend Market is in swing again, and pull into a nearby parking spot. Then we see the 'P2' and 'P4' parking signs. We look around and notice there are solar powered parking ticket dispensers every hundred yards or so, and we postulate that their purpose is allow you to pre-purchase parking time up to 4 hours, but we cannot seem to get the device to register more than an hours worth of time.  Looking up at the underside of the brige above us, we notice a group of blue-jersey tourists making their way across a girder. It appears we are witnissing a bridge-walk tour.  JP comments that his fear of heights would not make that a very fun thing to do.

We assume there is just something wrong with that particular parking meter, and circle around to the far side of the Rocks.  There we find the area too is metered parking, with slightly different rules.  Ariel tries a meter machine again, this time using a credit card, but the charge doesn't go through. We all scramble our loose change together, and somehow get a 4 hour card to spit out.  

We head up the stairs, and under the harbor bridge to the Weekend Street Market.  One of the first stands we see it the "Hottest Chili in the World" stand, and I think, "Oh here we go again", but miraculously, although it is the same company as the one in the Kuranda Markets, this stand does have a sauce made from the pulp of the Scorpoin Butch T. pepper, the for-reals hottest pepper in the world.  

I ask if the man has a sample we can taste, and again, unlike the Kuranda market, he pulls out a sample jar, and asks me to grab a chip. I hold out my chip and as he dips the bottle, a huge blob pours out of the jar, I hear him say 'whoops' to himself. JP grabs a chip and gets a sample as well.  We pop them in our mouths, and I recognise the nice taste, and then the burn. It's the same sauce that was used on the burger that I had to sign a waiver before ordering, (and ultimately could not finish) at the Swingin' Door Pub in San Mateo.  The burn is like the Energizer bunny.  It doesn't stop for 15 minutes, so, of course, I bought a bottle. 

We decide to do some more souviner shopping and grab lunch before hitting the ferry dock.  We walk back along George Street where we I noticed a 'rock shop' from the car on the way in.  unfortunately, much like all the other rock-shops we've seen this trip, it turns out to be just a jewelry store that specializes in opals.  We leave the store, and find a souviner shop across the street. There we find some cool shirts and stuff.  About this time the burn in my mouth is starting to subside, but my stomache is starting to react as if I had swallowed battery acid.

We cross the street again and enter "The Rocks Cafe."  We are lead up a tightly wound wooden staircase in the back, and are seated on the second floor.  We order and Henry sets his camera down on the next table over, to do a timed shot.  The waitress notices and offers to take our picture. She snaps no less than 7 shots from several different angles, talking the whole time.  All the shots turn out blurry or uninteresting. The food is good though, and the chips and sandwich take care of my battery acid problem. I order another chai just to keep from passing out from exhaustion. When it comes, it's almost all froth, and goes down like warm milk. Not the effect I was hoping for.

Sated, and almost two hours in-to our four hour parking validation, we head for the ferry. The Aboriginal guy is still on the corner jamming out his tunes. We rush to the Manly ferry terminal to find that we missed the boat by two minutes. We decide to ride the Darling Harbor ferry instead. The Darling ferry leaves in four minutes, and we have to run two terminals over to catch it. We get our tickets just as the ferry starts to board.  The boys want to ride on the top level, so we climb the steps, but by the time we get there, there are only seats open for the two older boys.  The rest of us stand, which is fine by me.  I try to snap a picture of all the boys as we pass by the Opera House, but the ferry is rotating quickly, and the sun is low, and every time everything is lined up, I end up facing into the sun, and the boys are all silouhetted. A crew member instructs us that if we don't have a place to sit, we'll have to ride below. 

Grudgingly, Ariel, Henry and I decend to the lower platform. The ferry goes under the Harbor Bridge, and stops at Luna Park, as it takes off again, I ascend to try to get another shot of the big boys, but the entire ferry is now in shadow. I also notice that a bunch of new people had boarded at the last stop, and a lot of them were standing on the top deck. We pass back into the sun, but now there isn't much along the lines of majestic backdrops, so I go below again to find Ariel, and the boys soon follow.  We make a few more stops and end up in Darling Harbor. This is the same area where we ate kangaroo the first night in Sydney. Ariel wants a latte, so we walk South towards the Starbucks. The ferry docked farther North than we expected, and it takes us a good half hour to get to the coffe shop. 

We order (I get a chai, because I know it won't suck), and when we get our drinks, Ariel realizes that we'd have only 8 minutes to get back on the next ferry. We decide to take our time and mozy back slowly. It's going on 5:00PM, so all the shops are closing as we pass by. 

We get back to the ferry terminal, and are within 3 minutes of the next launch, which returns directly to Circular Quey. We board, the boat backs out.  It's not yet dark, but it is long past the time when we could get good photos of anything. Before we know it, the ferry is pulling in to the Quey.  Walking back to the car, we pass the Aboriginal Didgeridoo-er and JP stops and buys a CD.

Heading back, I have the now ritual hard time navigating to the turnaround for the bridge.  Just past North Sydney, everyone has fallen asleep, and where I'm supposed to turn for the hotel, I don't, and we get stuck on the M2 for an additional 7 kilometers as there are no exits until the town of Epping.  Ariel tries to help me navigate, but it's dark, and the map is printed very small, and I'm 

frustrated and tired, and am not really being as communicative as I could be, and it just takes a lot longer to get back than it should.  As we pull up to the hotel, I find a taxi parked smack across the driveway. He gets out and motions us to pass not understanding that he's in our way, meanwhile a bus pulls toward us from the opposite direction. I pull behind the taxi who doesn't budge, and the bus has barely enough room to pass behind us. After what feels like an eternity, the taxi cedes, and pulls forward. Descending into the sloped driveway, I'm relieved, and even a bit smug, that at least all the fuss wasn't because of my American driving habits.  

I park, and we all pile back in to the hotel room. JP goes upstairs and crashes immediately, Ariel fires up her netbook to arrange boarding passes for the flight home. We ponder swapping our seats to the next class up, but the upgrade would cost us an extra $500, and we wouldn't be seated together. When I find out, that we wouldn't get those nice 180 degree reclining seats and personal TV screens that United was advertising, I decide that not only is it not worth it, but I don't want give United any more money than we absolutely have to. Ariel shows me the seating arrangements, and while it's still cramped, it's much better than our flight out.  We should have that big center box behind us this time, instead of next to us, crowding out the middle row.  That change alone should ease some of the clostrophobic feel.  

We probably have a few hours in Sydney tomorrow before we board the plane, but we won't have internet access until we're back state-side, so this will be the last blog post of the trip.  I plan to do some videos with the boys on the plane ride back, just discussing their favorite, and least favorite parts, etc.  I'm not sure what I'll do with it all, maybe one last blog post after we've all rested up a bit. Hope you've enjoyed it as much as we have.

- A, J & the Boyz