More on the Crazy Tourism

Okay, now that my mom and brother have left for the night I have a little more of a chance to sit down and write about everything we did this past weekend...which was a LOT. Last week was kind of a hard week because I had a presentation on Wednesday and this assignment due Friday for my Mech Design class which totally scares me, but by the time Friday rolled around, I was just kind of like whatever happens, happens...this is better drawing than I've ever done in my life. (Even if everyone else in the class is like SO much better than me.)

So the nice thing is that I'm done with class by 1 on Fridays (although most of my friends don't even HAVE class on Fridays...grrr), so I went over to Chinatown in the afternoon to meet up with Mom and Nick. They moved from this hotel where they were staying to a serviced apartment building in the middle of Sydney's central business district, aka the CENTER of the city where there is ALWAYS something going on! Their building is 56 floors and they are on the 55th. Talk about a nice location. They are basically right between Chinatown and Darling Harbour, which are two of the busiest and most fun areas of the city. (I know, I say that all areas of the city are busy and fun, that's because they are. :) So we went to Paddy's Market, which I know I've described before, but really there are no words to explain the craziness and total random-ness of this place. It is just SO Asian. You can get fresh produce, reallllllly good Asian rice snacks, dried nuts, etc., umbrellas, fans, watches, toys, pets (???), hilarious t-shirts, jewelry...you name it. And the Engrish that is absolutely everywhere is just hilarious. Nick bought some random stuff and the instructions or words on the side of the boxes just make no sense at all. It's great.

On Friday night, we went back to the Opera House (because going there just once last weekend obviously wasn't enough) to see a totally different performance than the symphony - this one was in the Studio Theatre and it was called "Survival Tactics". It was basically this very modern performance art type show with some freestyle rapping and a loose plot line, with a lot of AMAZING break-dancing and awesome routines. I really enjoyed it! I love going to different kinds of shows that I’ve never seen before, and there are a lot of very experimental theater type things that go on at that theatre for really affordable prices (for Sydney, that is), so I definitely plan on going back there at least two or three more times in the next couple months!

On Saturday, we went to the Powerhouse Museum in the morning and the Aquarium in the afternoon, so that was exhausting but totally rewarding. The Powerhouse Museum is one of the most famous museums in Sydney. It’s huge and totally unlike a typical museum where you just stand around and look at things (I don’t have a very good attention span for that type of museum). There’s a lot of hands-on exhibits (my mom and Nick got REALLY into making electronic music in the sound lab, and I enjoyed playing their drum set…haha), and so many cool things, from design and fashion to robotics and space technology. I LOVE museums like that. Then we had lunch in Darling Harbour (which now thanks to Mom and Nick I have gotten quite familiar with!) and went to the Aquarium in the afternoon. We finally got a chance to see the elusive platypus. It is kind of cute, I guess, but I have to say not the most exciting animal to watch - definitely unique, though. My favorite part was definitely the SEALS. I don’t know what it is about them - the way they walk, or swim, or cuddle up to rocks, or everything, but I was in love with these seals and could not stop staring at them. THEY ARE SO CUTE. Some things that are not so cute were the HUGE sharks and manta rays, but they were also incredibly cool to look at. The displays at the aquarium are just set up amazingly well - you get to walk through these tunnels that have glass on all sides (including above you), so you really feel like you are in the tank, almost. When we were walking through one of the tunnels there was just this huge manta ray RIGHT on top of us like sucking on the glass. Kind of creepy, but cool.

Anyway, by Saturday night, we were pretty exhausted, so we grabbed a fairly early dinner and then Nick and I just wandered around the neighborhood looking at the AMAZING ASIAN BAKERIES. Did you know that Asian bakeries are incredible? Because I didn’t. They sell the COOLEST things and they have the most hilarious descriptions because they don’t know how to translate them into English…my favorite was the explanation of the “mouse watery” (mouthwatering) cherry cake that would “revitalize your life” or something. Nick took pictures of all of those so I’m going to have to get them from him once he gets home. So after we had walked around for a while we realized we were actually the ONLY white people within like a five block radius. Yeah, I definitely did not know that Australia had SO many Asian people. At first I thought it was just large tourist groups, but it’s actually everywhere. I guess that is why it is called Australasia, after all.

So on Sunday we had to wake up at the ungodly hour of six in the morning to go on our deluxe all day tour of the Blue Mountains, which are about two hours west of Sydney. This tour didn’t just involve that, though - it was on this four wheel drive mini bus and we stopped in the morning at Featherdale Wildlife Park. Even though it was still really early, I immediately woke up at the prospect of PETTING KOALAS. Apparently koalas can be kind of nasty, but these were all raised in the park so they were just very tame and SO SOFT. But even more than koalas, I find myself COMPLETELY obsessed with kangaroos. Really, kangaroos aren’t special at all here - they are comparable to deer in the States because they are so common and occasionally just have to be killed. (and apparently their meat tastes like venison…haven’t tried that yet, though, and don’t know if I will. Eeeek.) But I am still totally obsessed with kangaroos. The way they move is SO COOL - they use their tails as a kind of fifth leg, and then they HOP! It’s totally different looking at pictures of them than actually seeing and petting them in person. I kind of want a pet kangaroo now. Or a wallaby. Or a wombat or echidna. Also, emus are very cool. Yeah, Australian animals are basically AWESOME.

We had various stops throughout the forest on the way to the Blue Mountains (and it was a BUMPY ride, thank goodness we had this particular vehicle, because the terrain was SO rocky), and it was amazing that just a couple hours away from Sydney everything was completely rural and unsettled. (except for all the little towns that exist solely because of the mass numbers of tourists…haha) When we finally got there, though, the tour kind of rushed us through, which was too bad. We took a cable car up to the top, and then another scenic glass car ride into the valley so we could see the famous Three Sisters formation, and then we got to walk through the rainforest-y part (kind of dark and damp), and then we got to take this AWESOME railroad back up to the top. It’s apparently the steepest railway in the world (see picture)! Then we visited another little park on the way back where the kangaroos just hang out in the wild in their natural habitat, so that was cool. All in all, it was a great tour, but by the end of it I got this SPLITTING headache because the tour guide seriously would not stop talking the ENTIRE time we were on the bus. I know that’s what tour guides are supposed to be like but his mike was just a liiiiittle too close to his mouth so it was all just much louder than it needed to be. Plus, there was this lady sitting right behind us who had seriously the SCARIEST LAUGH I have ever heard. It was this CACKLE and she laughed all the time and it was so loud and I kid you not, it was terrifying. Nick and Mom and I just kept looking at each other and mouthing please make it stop…haha. Really not so funny at the time though because it was SCARY.

So as of today I feel rather tourist-ed out. But also proud because now I’ve seen everything that all my friends who got to Australia two weeks before me had already seen in the time before I got here! Now I should go work, seeing as I am in school and have more assignments due this week. Easy to forget when your family is vacationing here!

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