Quick Visit to the Land Down Under

 G'day Mate

Sydney Opera House with the Harbour Bridge behind it

Recently I had a couple of weeks of holidays to kill and I decided to go to Australia to visit a couple of my favorite people.  I had met them in Japan and since they were both living in Sydney now I figured I would take the opportunity to see them and a piece of Australia at the same time.

Logan

Nikki

I also decided to splurge on this trip and I upgraded to Business Class flights.  Well, let me tell you, I have a better understanding of why these types of tickets are so expensive.  At the airport you have access to a very large lounge area where everything is free; food, showers, seats and even a game room.

On the airplane you now get a very comfortable "cocoon" seat which reclines into a bed.  I think the flight was 15hrs to Sydney and 14 back.  Neither flight was much of a burden for me.  Nice and quiet, no kids running around, yelling or kicking the back of my seat.  Food was good and the service was excellent.  I recommend flying this way if you can afford it.  Hopefully I will be able to do it again in the future.

Being a business class passenger I was given a ticket to fast track through immigration but I was unable to find the proper line.  Thankfully it didn't take long to get out of immigration and customs.  My buddy Logan was waiting for me when I got out of the airport and we went to find my hotel in the city.

It didn't take very long to get to the Central train stop and then just a simple 5min walk to the hotel.  I managed to pick a nice location, much of the things I wanted to see were within walking distance and the subway was very easy to use.  Something I always seem to do when I go to a city for the first time is get a hotel that is near or in the more iffy parts.  Sydney is no exception.  When I went Athens for Christmas I stayed next to what I thought was a drug park, in Sydney I'm pretty sure I was in the red light district as we passed many "Thai Massage" places and even a couple of "Adult Life Style" shops.  Livin' the life!

Darling Harbour

Harbour City Mall

Walking bridge to cross the harbour

One of the ships you can explore at the "Australian National Maritime Museum"

The submarine and the Sailing ship along with the War Ship are all exhibits that you can go on.  It's even a reasonable 32AUD.  The mall here is OK but nothing special.  I did get myself a Kangaroo hat though

Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge

I went to the Opera house and Harbour Bridge area a couple of times, once to get the iconic picture and once to get some night shots.  Here are the results.

City scape from Mrs. Macquarie's Chair

 These pictures are taken from a park area across the harbour.  It's called Mrs Macquaire's Chair.  The chair is just a concrete formation like a step.  Very disappointing, but the park was quite nice.

I think this is my first selfie using a selfie stick

The Royal Botanical Gardens

The Royal Botanical Gardens are really nice.  It's the kind of place I could spend the entire day at and I did spend a couple of hours here while waiting for my friends to get off work.

City scape from near the Opera House

I wanted to get some night shots of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge but the Botanical Gardens were closed so I had to settle for pictures of the bridge and Opera House separately.  I think they still came out nice.

One of the most famous things about Australia is the wildlife, and it didn't disappoint.  The birds are multitude and very different from other cities.  I only go one picture though.

This type of bird was everywhere in the city along side the usual suspects.  Pigeons, sparrows and other common birds.  The Botanical Garden had a lot of different types too.

Weather

 A Tropical Cyclone hit land on the day I arrived.  That was north in the Queensland area but it brought a lot of rain to Sydney as well.  I didn't mind so much as it kept things cool and uncrowded.

 There were also partly cloudy days.  I got to see Hyde Park (above) which is also a very nice park.

 There was a day of fog which happened to be on the day we went to the Blue Mountains.  This is supposed to be a beautiful view of the whole area, but all you can see is the drawing provided.

 There was also a couple of cloudless days.  Above is Bondi Beach.  We took a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour.  Later that night I was watching Bondi Rescue on the TV.  It's always surreal when you have been somewhere and then you see it on TV.

From the top of the bus

Overall the trip was very good.  Weather was fine (for me) and I was able to see a few things but most importantly I was able to hang out with my friends a lot.

On the final day (my flight was at 9:30pm) we went for a river ferry cruise.  I love riding in boats so I really enjoyed this part of the trip too and was only mildly anxious about missing my flight.

After all this I was off to the airport.

In Central station going to the airport train

I think I walked over 120,000 steps over the six or seven days that I was in Australia so my feet were a little sore here but I was working the hat, that's for sure.

My final picture is a sunrise picture.  Please enjoy and share this post with all your friends and feel free to comment.