Day 16 - Sydney By Day and Night

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It’s another beautiful day in Sydney. The umbrellas are out, the rain is coming down in buckets, and mini raging rivers are flooding the streets. Awesome! We slept in a little then ventured out to check out our new neighborhood, the Rocks. The Rocks is a part of Sydney that is infamous for being the prison site in New South Wales where all the prisoners were sent by the British. The British sent the convicts down here and appointed a British governor to rule over the state. Anyway, The Rocks is now a very cool shopping district and is a stone’s throw away from the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the Opera House, the botanical Gardens and many other sites. We have a great view from the roof of our hotel many of these sites. On the weekends the side streets are blocked off and little flea markets are set up.

We headed out for lunch and shopping. The shopping didn’t last that long as we are sick of the rain pouring down. If we haven’t mentioned it already, this is the wettest July in Sydney since the 1950’s. Awesome. Today is the day of the bridge climb and we are sort of dreading the event since it is still raining. We walked over to the bridge and our 3 ½ endeavor that will for sure leave us totally soaked when we are finished. We are in a group of 14 people of all ages and sizes. Everyone is from Australia except us. After signing our lives away and getting a breath test we started to put on all our gear. First we put on the jump suit, then rain pants, hat, gloves, rain jacket, harness, radio, and headphones. We started for the bridge and we just made sure we got in front of the kids and the 50+ year old ladies that were out here on a girls’ weekend. We knew that since Oprah got her fat ass up the bridge we could too. We just weren’t too excited about it because of the weather. We started walking on the wooden beans under the bridge to get to all the stairs on top. The guide was good and gave us lots of details about the building of the bridge. Only 16 men died while building the bridge, which is a pretty small number compared to the millions of man-hours but into building it. Finally we make it to the stairs which starts the climb. Now the sun did not come out or anything, but miraculously the rain did stop. We couldn’t believe it. We stopped several times on the bridge for the guide to take photos. Climbers cannot take anything up on the bridge. Watches, cameras, big earrings, and wallets all have to go in the lockers. They even make you go through a metal detector before the climb. It was really windy up there, but at least the rain was paused for a while. We made it to the top of the bridge and saw everything in the Harbor: the Opera House, little islands in the harbor, navy ships, the zoo, botanical gardens, and the government houses. The climb down on the other side of the bridge provided different view of the harbor and right when we got down underneath the bridge off the stairs, the rain started up again. Someone was looking out for us today! We were probably the only group this day that made it through the climb without getting really wet.

With the climb behind us, we were starving. We headed to a small bar right next to our hotel. We definitely did not want another $100+ meal and this place looked cheaper than others. We ordered beers from the bar and then food from the kitchen. No waitresses here. The food here is not that great. It’s pretty bland. The Aussies can do Italian ok, but not much else. Seafood and meat are the main keys to their cuisine but it’s just doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor. Louis from the kitchen delivered our food and instantly asked where we were from. As soon as Kirsten said Texas, he mentioned how the steaks are not that good from there and that American food is not that great. Interesting, we were just thinking the same about his food. As we finished our meal, Louis made frequent stops to tell us many things: his nationalities (about 3 of them, but he focused on the Jewish since they “have all the money and own all the banks in the world”, his sexual orientation, places he has visited, and whatever else was on his mind. He was hysterical. One thing we learned from him was that the gay men here in Australia are called “Koalas”. In the states Louis would be called a “Bear.” The next thing we knew as we were laughing our butts off with Louis was that Aussies are very friendly. A man and his guitar were setting up on the small stage for tonight’s entertainment. This guy (who looks a lot like Chester’s friend Dusty) just provided the background music for the entertainment. The Aussies once they start drinking are great for people watching. We ordered a second beer and that’s when a 49-year-old woman and her daughter (what is it with mother/daughter teams) decided to sit with us and drink and dance the night away. Now this is not just a coincidence since Chester feels the need to talk to anyone walking by. Kirsten, realizing how drunk they were just tried not to make eye contact but it didn’t matter. They had planted themselves for the night. Ellen, the mother, told us right away that she rarely drinks or gets drunk. However, she was completely wasted and started telling us all these drunken adventures to Vegas and other places she has been on. Cody, her daughter, within about 3 minutes of talking to her, told Chester that she just had a boob job. She went to Thailand and for $3000 got D cups implanted. Then she showed Chester the before and after pics on her phone. The drinks kept flowing and then the dancing started up. At one point, Cody was running through the bar and then launching herself into the arms of a drunk guy similar to Dirty Dancing. The drunk guy later got kicked out by security for starting a fight. This place was awesome. The musician kept asking for requests and he played a bunch. He was really quite good. Our favorites included: Neil Diamond’s Cherry, Cherry and Sweet Caroline; Moon Dance; The Day the Music Died; John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy and Take me Home Country Road (he played that for us since one of us was from Colorado) A Boy Named Sue; The Gambler; Sweet Home Alabama and Jesse’s Girl. The guy was good and Cody kept asking to do Karaoke and that she had the voice of an angel. The guitarist just kept trying to ignore her. This all made for great entertainment.

Forgetting it was Friday night, and we had just come from the bridge climb our attire was not the most attractive, at least Chester’s wasn’t. Black pants, long sleeve underarmor shirt, with a blue short-sleeve underarmor shirt, very sporty spice we will say. The Aussie ladies were dressed in lots of dresses and high heels. We were in our sneakers, not the best for dancing. The music kept playing, the drinks kept going down and the dancing was all over the place. Now the mom and daughter are still boozing it and dancing and running around. About every other song, they would come back to our table and tell us some story that we couldn’t understand. Now don’t forget about Louis, our guy from the kitchen, he kept coming back and telling us how much he needed to be spanked and that he was a hairy wombat. We have no idea what that means but just kept laughing at everything. By the end of the night, we were dancing too and met a few Aussie guys, Nigel and his friends. The friend had on one of the ugliest shirts we have ever seen and we made fun of it constantly. He was a little socially awkward too, which made him even more endearing. We would make him go up to women and try and dance with them, especially if they had on fuzzy fur shawls. At 2 am, the shawl girl was throwing herself at him and we all had a great laugh. So after many, many beers it was after 2, and we were ready to head home. It was an expensive night, but a blast. It was first time on our trip that we were actually at the bar drinking. We just can’t afford to hit the bars here.

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