For our final two weeks in Australia we returned to Sydney. I had been wanting to stay at a Meriton Serviced Apartments since we started planning for this trip. They looked great online and got great reviews, but were pretty expensive. At last we were checking in to one in the suburb of Zetland (about 30 minutes by bus from downtown and pretty much everywhere else we wanted to go). It far surpassed our expectations. It was spacious, clean, modern, and best of all it was on the top floor of the tower (22nd) with floor to ceiling windows facing the city and a corner patio providing amazing views from every room. There was also a brand new upscale shopping center about 3 minutes walk away that had great restaurants, grocery stores, bottle shop (fulfilling Dessa's beer needs) and a chemist (drug store). It was perfect!

Since we had not gone to the beach on our first stop here, we started out with a trip to Bondi Beach, which is probably the most well known beach in Australia. It was a huge crescent with at least 100 yards of super soft sand to accommodate the hoards of almost naked sun worshipers and the neoprene clad surfers. We returned several times and the beach was always crowded, mostly with twenty somethings. Bill never stopped marveling at the numbers of young people that apparently had no school or work to be at. The weather was fantastic in the mid 80's each day, but the sun felt quite hot with a sort of stinging intensity that lets you know it will burn your skin. This obviously does not deter everyone. Deep dark tans abound, as do skin clinics. Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging. I like a tan as well as they do. We enjoyed laying around with the other slackers, reading, and people watching. The "ladies" bathing suits are cheekie, meaning their cheeks hang out, and depending on their size, you may or may not see a strip of bathing suit between. Many of them were also sunbathing topless. Very entertaining for Bill. Most of the guys are still in knee length board shorts, but many came with my second favorite type of six pack. I did catch a little male nudity. Unfortunately, it's something I can't un-see - a wrinkly old guy in a saggy speedo. Yuck!

There were lots of coastal hike options, so we did Bondi Beach to Coogee Beach and Coogee Beach to Maroumba Beach on different days. It is beautiful rugged coastline, with fingers jutting out into the ocean forming crescent beaches in between. It is easy to see why people want to live here. As we have seen everywhere in Australia, great facilities are available at no charge to the public. The large beaches always had bath houses and swimming pools. The pools are fed by the waves allowing you can swim safely (ie Shark free) but without the water maintenance issues of a traditional pool. If you prefer the open ocean, in some place they had shark nets and they always had swimming sections designated separate from surfing areas. Of course the tourists were ignorant of the rules and were constantly being told to move to the swimming area. We found surfers at every beach even when the waves were not large. The biggest waves we saw were probably 6 feet.

The coastal walks were very well maintained with nice boardwalks. For the most part we stayed on the path but we did forge our own way across the rocks out onto the points a few times. The power of the waves crashing on the rocks was awesome to watch. Not to be overly dramatic, but it was like looking into the mouth of a killer. The resulting rock formations were striking. On one of these excursions, we watched a group of people from the local
scuba club releasing live crustaceans back into the ocean (pretty interesting but the water was too cold for Sydney based diving to interest us). Hope all the scenery pictures don't bore you too much. It is almost impossible to capture the awe inspiring vision in a picture.

On our first visit to Sydney, Bill had wanted to see the inside of the Sydney Opera House. The tour tickets were almost $40 so he looked for a performance instead and found us tickets to go see Sinead O'Conner perform during this return trip to Sydney. The Opera House contains several performance halls. Ours probably held 5,000 people and was lit primarily with
red light - interesting but not as remarkable as the outside of the Opera House. Just before the performance, Sinead announced that she would no longer sing her iconic hit "Nothing Compares 2 U" because she could not connect to it emotionally. Diva BS! (there was a great article in the local Sydney paper making fun of her and other singers that have made similar decisions). Sinead's show sounded good but it was very short lasting only 1 hour 15 minutes including the encore. She was weird, hair about 1 inch long, dressed in jeans and a sweater, barefoot and her dancing was more like hopping. The music she played all had a message of some sort. She seemed angry to me, so the tour name was appropriate, "I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss".

We went to a festival in The Royal Botanic Gardens called The Spectrum Playground. Yes another festival! As usual, food, music, art exhibits and a few quirky things. At this festival, I made myself an iced Chai tea by riding a stationary bike that drove the blender. It was pretty good if I do say so myself. The weather was perfect, so it was lovely to be outside in the evening. We also went back to Hyde Park to visit the ANZAC (Australian New Zealand Army Core) Memorial. Bill had really enjoyed the memorial in Melbourne, but this one was disappointing by comparison. St. Mary's Cathedral was across the street, so we went inside. It was very impressive. Constructed in 1882, it is the longest church in Australia, which you can see in the picture we took.

During our last 2 days we really went all out tourist. We rented a tandem bike and rode around Centennial Park and made another trip to Bondi Beach (which might have been a bit of a mistake given the hills we had to ride up on the way back). I felt a bit ridiculous riding on it and couldn't see where we were going past Bill who was in front (Don't believe her. I think she was coasting a bit and looking around while I was pedaling). We found a large pond in the center of Centennial Park where there were tons of birds of all kinds. Swans, pigeons, Ibis, ducks, giant pelicans, etc... The next day we rented a car and drove towards Manly where we rented a 2 person sea kayak at Spit Harbor (using a Groupon). It was fun paddling along the beaches and coast line and admiring the huge yachts (of course Dessa's favorite was the largest one which also happened to be on sale - I'm happy to accept any donations you might want to make towards its $10M sales price) but after 1.5 hours, we had seen all we could without paddling into heavy seas, so we ditched the kayak and went to the beach at Manly. Here we discovered how the Australians pay for all the facilities that are free, they charge a lot for parking. It was $7 per hour and it does not get cheaper the longer you stay. We even saw one area where the rate went up per hour the longer you stayed. Yikes!

Bill found another Groupon for an Escape game, but their website said they only had 1 space available, so he went on his own to play. The place was run by a Chinese family and when he got there they explained that 1 space meant 1 room and not 1 player so he was supposed to bring others to help him escape. They allowed him to play by himself but unfortunately he was not able to escape. (The puzzles were pretty good although poorly implemented. In fact one of the clues was completely missing. Afterwards, they tried to show me what I was supposed to do and they couldn't even find the clue which was supposed to be painted on the wall. Bottom line, I had fun. Even if they had implemented the room better, I still don't think I could have solved all the puzzles and gotten out)

Off to the Blue Mountains for some hiking and hopefully to finally see a live Kangaroo.


As always, higher resolution photos are available on Flikr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bill_and_ dessa/sets/

...Bill and Dessa