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Published: April 25th 2007
So if Melbourne was Boston, Sydney is most definitely New York City. After a quick little 16 hour bus ride - the bus broke down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere for 3 hours - I cruised into Sydney the other day. And the one thing the travel guides failed to mention about hostel/backpacker central Kings Cross is that it also happens to be Sydney's Red Light District. At around noon yesterday, I got asked by a nice woman on the street, "would you like to see a laaaaady?? (in the thickest Aussie accent you can imagine)" Ha! I actually would though....I met an Australian girl on the plane who lives in LA and was just heading back for a wedding and duped her into spending a whole day cruising around Melbourne with me. I'm now officially hooked. I need to find myself a sweet little Aussie girl so I always have an excuse to come back here. Maybe I can find one in one of the 15 Club X's on this block alone.
Back to Sydney. So I've officially jinxed the weather here. It has now rained 4 out of the 6 days
I've been here and to top it off, I had my first casualty of the trip in losing my umbrella in Melbourne the other day. Today I put on my tourist hat and my invisible/proverbial neon fanny pack and treked through the Royal Botanical Gardens (which actually were pretty cool - except the exotic bird calls shrieking above my head were not quite tropical birds, but hundreds and hundreds of giant vampire bats!) to get to the Sydney Opera House - perhaps you've heard of it. The Opera House is much cooler than I expected and it's huge too. However, since it's ANZAC Day (Australian-New Zealand Army Corps) the entire city is shut down and nothing is open - which would be totally cool if people were partying in the streets. You'd think with all the piss these blokes drink they'd find a way to turn a solemn day of rememberance into a piss-up.
Did I mention Kings Cross sucks? I went from an open-spaced, friendly, funky hostel in Melbourne with travelers from all over the world (ok fine, just England) to a place with nothing but German backpackers who travel thousands of miles to sit in the own
squalor and do nothing. They don't even travel. They just sit there like schizerstrasssenfloudanizel and do nothing but build up body odor. Also the place itself just has a hallway, closed doors to the common space and a depression that stinks like a cheap cologne mixed with Vienna coffee and cigarettes thanks to the Germans. Luckily, I'm staying with this English guy who looks and parties like Spiccolli and hates Germans so we've had a good time. He slept in this morning to sleep off the $20 worth of pot he bought from a crack head hobo at 7am.
But again, I've been here for a couple days and I'm basically ready to move on. Byron Bay is calling my name. I've said it before - I didn't come to Australia for the city. I just have to wait for the camera store to recover the 150 or so pictures I accidentally deleted from the entire weekend in Melbourne (oops) before I can do anything to keep me out of my hostel. I figure quick trips to Manly Beach (my pythons should fit right in, huh?), Bondi Beach, a rugby game and a few more jugs of Victoria Bitter
and I'm out for Queensland. That's all I got for now. So far, long story short, Melbourne 2 - Sydney 1 (the Opera House gets them a point, but not enough to win the match).
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Marife - Sydney
non-member comment
sorry u had to be in Sydney when it's continually raining. must admit it hasn't rained this long in quite a while. we need it though. well, good luck with the rest of ur trip. i'm starting mine in about a week. i fly to NYC on Fri next week. Yippee!