November 9

Sydney: Sympathy For Sandy

So I've felt pretty good in Sydney having avoided all of the mess surrounding Hurricane Sandy when, lo and behold, on Wednesday night I was woken at 12:30 with an announcement that the hotel had suffered a power outage. I went back to sleep, figuring they'd sort it out overnight.  In the morning, though, there was still no electricity.  After a dark (but, happily, hot shower), I walked down 26 flights to enjoy the day.  Things were still not set right by late afternoon, so I was moved to another downtown hotel for my last night.

My days in Australia have been great, though.  Sydney is a huge city both in terms of population and size, full of neighborhoods brimming with cute shops, great pubs, outdoor restaurants and a very diverse population - with far more Asians than I expected, from Chinese to South Asian to Indonesian.  The weather is great and, with summer coming on (which is so weird as Christmas approaches), the streets are full of shoppers in very relaxed clothing, although some suits pop up now and again.

Tuesday was an exception, though, because it was the day of the Melbourne Cup, of course.  What?  You've never heard of the Melbourne Cup.  To Aussies, its like a combination of the Super Bowl and the Kentucky Derby.  The town was practically shut down as everyone got up in their finest, from bowlers to fancy women's hats and frocks, to celebrate at restaurants and taverns this most famous of all Australian horse races.  Even Prince Phillip and wife Camilla were on hand for the occasion.

I spent the day at Bondi Beach, perhaps the most famous of Sydney beaches, a lovely hook of sand with plenty of surfers and a few other intrepid souls braving the coolish but clear water.

I also had a chance to wander around Sydney, not far from Botany Bay where Captain Cook first landed and the first group of some 1000 prison inmates arrived in the late 18th Century.

Tuesday night I spent a fortune on a walk.  This one, though, involved a jump suit, 60 minutes of instruction and preparation (including a breathalyzer!) and a fancy set of clips as I joined a dozen others in climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge at sunset.  We slowly made our way through the granite pillars and steel support braces to the main suspension elements, then walked up the top section all the way to the very apex of the bridge, many hundreds of feet above Sydney Harbor.  The views, of course, were unbelievable, especially as they changed from day to night.  The wind was howling and I was glad for the tether that kept us connected to a wire strung alongside the braces and walkways up and down.  The whole experience is somewhat overblown from a safety and preparation point of view but it was a bracing eyeful, a lot of fun with a unique perspective on the city.  A couple of shots will follow when I get them off the expensive CD I purchase.  Come back in a couple of days and I should have them posted.

By the time we got down, half of Sydney was trashed due to the Melbourne Cup; fancy ladies in evening dresses and ridiculous hats were bent over curbs recycling their dinners while their dates flailed against any nearby support to remain upright.  Absolutely crazy!

The next day I took a ferry (one of many in Sydney) to Manly Beach, another surfer's paradise, where a lunch of fish and chips improved my mood from the overcast skies.  The views towards Sydney were spectacular.

Over the course of a few days, I wandered all over town, enjoying fabulous oysters, expensive beer and lovely parks.  Sydney is a great town and I am sorry that I did not have time to visit more of it or take in some of the many nearby parks and mountains with superb hiking, let alone see more of this nation that is almost as large as the 48 U.S. states with just 10% of its population.

But my New Zealand adventures await, so on Friday I got on a new A380 (the largest plane in the world) - with about 500 other people - for a pleasant flight down to Auckland, a mere 16 hours ahead of New York.  Much more to come!