Yesterday was our last full day here and, while I can't exactly say that we made the most of it, we did have a lot of fun and see some interesting things. Backpacking etiquette dictated that we get up at the stroke of dawn to squeeze as much Australiany flavor from our final day in Sydney, but vacation etiquette demanded we sleep in one last time before returning to work and the real world. Vacation etiquette handily won the unsurprisingly one-sided battle, which left us with only five or six solid hours to explore. We ventured out into thick sunless fog and a sea of gray. I wish I had another word for it; I feel like I've described every day here as "gray" which is as boring to write as it is to read. Hmm...how about "we ventured out into thick sunless fog under a murky slate sky that held all the charm of a jejune editorial on various types of dirt." Heh, words are fun :) With time running out we headed straight for the Sydney Harbor Bridge and walked from one end to the other, occasionally blown from one side of the path to another by a strong, hot wind. The bridge itself is beautiful regardless of the weather, and its labyrinthine metallic trusses seemed to merge with the surrounding smoke-tinged clouds. I haven't looked into it to verify, but I think the Brooklyn Bridge must be a good bit longer because this didn't seem to take as much time to cross. We had sweeping views of the bay and Opera House, but the scene lost some of its charm without the bridge in view. I imagine it would be like seeing Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower; sure the city's beautiful, but it's entirely missing a quintessential symbol of the city itself. We had a delicious lunch at The Botanist, a (you guessed it) botany-themed restaurant in an area called Kirribilli. We're always struck by the arrestingly interesting names here. I'm not sure if they're based on aboriginal words or if somebody thought it would be fun to pull a bunch of scrabble letters out of a hat each time a city needed a name, but we love it either way. Our waiter at the restaurant is headed to the US for three weeks and is visiting some really diverse places (California, Nevada, Kentucky, New York) so we had fun giving him some tips on things to see and do. Our most emphatic recommendation was a giant slice of pizza with a cold Brooklyn Lager from a rooftop bar overlooking Manhattan, which really put me in the mood for our Warwick trip this Thanksgiving. We're cashing in some more hotel points for a couple of nights in the Park Hyatt New York, and if it's half as nice as the one we're in now we're going to have an amazing time! The main downside to staying in all these hotels is that sharing a dorm in a stinky hostel has lost some of its appeal, and I'm a little frightened by the idea of that part of our travels being over. Brittany, however, is less frightened than insensitively ecstatic. I've never been to Coney Island, but I'm willing to bet it's a lot like Luna Park, a tiny theme park right on the bay that was originally built nearly a century ago. There's a Ferris wheel, carousel, slides, carnival games and the absolutely-required-if-you're-to-be-tak en-seriously cotton candy (which they imaginatively call Fairy Floss). The best part is that you can walk through it for free, which is what we planned to do until we saw some rides that necessitated up-close inspection. I'm a fan of just about anything that attempts to make you sick, so I had no choice but to get on a nausea-inducing contraption that simultaneously spins you in three ways at once. Brittany smartly watched from the ground while I was tossed around like a rag doll with a herd of like-minded ten year olds. It took a good five minutes to get my balance back but I am proud to tell you that my cookies remained firmly in my possession! Brittany was duly impressed and then rode one of those neck-snapping pinball roller coasters after we enjoyed a few spins on the Ferris wheel. Nightmare-inducing clowns seemed to be the unfortunately recurring pictorial theme, but hey, who DOESN'T want to walk home while fearing that an axe-wielding clown might jump out from behind any given corner??? The weather was the real mystery though; at one point there wasn't a single spot of blue in the sky and big fat drops of side-swiping rain threatened to close the park. Literally ten minutes later the sun appeared and somehow melted every dreary cloud like butter on a skillet. For the first time we saw the city as we'd been hoping to. Unfortunately it was right about that time that Brittany started to feel sick, so we didn't get to take much advantage of it. At the very least we got some postcard views from our walk back across the bridge, which took much longer than it should've because I retook a now sunny version of every single photo from the morning. We tried to take a ferry across the bay instead but our technologically-impaired US credit cards wouldn't work at the stations. They use a sadly simplistically named system called "pay wave" where you wave the card over a reader to magically make a payment. Those metal chips that we JUST got back home are already passé here, and we got countless confused looks from waiters and receptionists as the futilely waved our hunks of plastic over the readers. There was usually a moment of silence before I nervously joked about our woefully behind technology, which invariably guaranteed a toothy smile. Brittany went straight to bed at the hotel just as the sun was really starting to shine, so I cracked open an exquisite bottle of fumé blanc from our tasting tour and sipped a glass on the suddenly glowing balcony as hopeful passengers piled on to a nearby cruise ship. The weatherproof to that point has really held us back here, so we're having to keep from forming an opinion on the city until we get a second crack at it. If we had to base it only on what we've seen on this trip, then Melbourne is undoubtedly tops. But there's SO much we didn't get to do because of the weather! Bondi beach, the walk to Coogee, Botany Bay, all of south Sydney... We never really went more than a half hour's walk from the hotel, come to think of it. There will be plenty for us to see and do if we ever make it back, that's for shizzle. With Brittany still feeling down we (naturally) opted for one last night of room service and finished our trip with a delicious thud. We've both loved Australia. It isn't quite as exotic as I would've liked (there's just something so pedestrian about visiting countries that speak English, and I'm still sore about not getting a passport stamp) but it's definitely in my top five trips, which says quite a lot. The first week was the most beautiful, the second week -my favorite- was the most stereotypically Australian, and the last week was the most luxurious. I was constantly struck by the amazing variety of birdlife here, and I certainly didn't expect wild parrots and macaws to be flying around major cities! Even seemingly drab birds would spread their wings to reveal a rainbow assortment of color that often stopped me in my tracks. The Opera House may not have been the drop-dead stunner we'd expected, but it's still an icon of the nation and I'll be very happily reminded of this trip every time I see it in Finding Nemo. And kangaroos hopping on a beach? Come on, it doesn't get much cooler than that :) I'm trying hard to not think about our quickly-approaching twenty hours of airtime, and I'm pretty sure it'll take a while before I want to fly to the other side of the planet again. In the end though, it's always worth it. This one set the bar high for a landmark anniversary. Man, what will we do for our 20th?