G'day from Sydney!

Well, after nearly 24 hours in transit we finally made it to the land down under..."where beer does flow and men chunder".

For our first day here we managed to stay awake all day and got our bearings by taking a Hop On Hop Off bus tour around the city. These kinds of tours are perfect if you just want to sit on top of a double-decker bus, learn some facts from the commentary on the headphones, and hear the occasional snippet of some famous local rock song. And yes, they did play the above-referenced song "Down Under" by Men At Work, as well as some INXS tunes and a couple of very Aussie-sounding folk ballads. Beauty!

We caught a few glimpses of the big must-see tourist attractions, like St. Mary’s Cathedral, but as the afternoon wore on we found ourselves too exhausted to do much more than grab a couple pints and an early dinner. 

Our second day in the city was much more productive in terms of exploring. We took a morning walking tour that explained more of the history of Sydney and Australia. The history of the Aboriginal Australians in this area goes back 30,000 years. However the British penal colony was established much more recently, in 1788. Throughout the city, we saw many instances of the old colonial buildings juxtaposed with the new; the modern Sydney Observation Tower looms over the historic St. James Church, for example. 

The British Empire first colonized Australia by sending shiploads of convicts here to settle the land, ignoring the fact that it was already settled by the hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal people already living here. It was a rough life at first for the prisoners sent to the Sydney area; the soil here was poor, there was a decade of drought, and many of the convicts were not used to farming. Over the decades the colony grew, as the prisoners earned their freedom and additional free British settlers immigrated here seeking opportunity. A well-preserved working-class district known as “The Rocks” still has some of the historic buildings left standing, most of them are now touristy cafes and pubs. This area is usually much more crowded with tourists than this picture shows, but there had been a massive hour-long deluge of rain just before the photo was taken.

There are some whimsical modern art installations hidden among the narrow lanes between the old brick buildings. 

After our walking tour, we took a city ferry across the harbor to Manly Beach. The ferry took us right past the iconic Sydney Opera House.

Manly is a popular beach for surfing, and we saw at least a hundred surfers out there catching some waves. There were also several beach volleyball games going on, and half of the beach was taken up by the New South Wales Surf Life Saving Championships. Today’s events featured a Surf Boat Competition which was fun to watch for a bit. Hopefully beachgoers at other beaches in the region were swimming extra cautiously, because judging from the crowds most of the lifeguards in the state of NSW were here in Manly for the event. As far as I could tell, no actual human lives were risked (or saved) during the competition.

Sydney has a huge and vibrant Chinatown, and on Friday nights they have a very popular Night Market with food vendors and all kinds of other merchandise for sale. Since it wasn't far from the hotel, we walked down to check it out. Despite the rainy weather it was super crowded! 

And of course just as we were deciding which stall to order from, the skies opened up and it started pouring. We took shelter inside the nearest indoor food court and had a delicious meal there instead. (Note the whole roasted ducks hanging in the window behind me). 

We waited out the rain and then wandered back to the hotel admiring some of the public art in the Chinatown laneways. 

By the way if you're noticing all the rainbow-themed art and flags in our photos, it's because it is Pride Week here. So far our time in Sydney has been full of rain and rainbows -- very fitting for the "Land of Oz"!