Month: January 2018

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Sydney, Australia

Today is our wedding anniversary, happy anniversary Yanmei!

We did a free walking tour of Sydney. It was very busy, there were probably 40+ people on the tour which made the group much too big. A bit surprising for a Wednesday morning with patchy rain, although fortunately we didn’t get more than a few very light sprinkles during the tour. The tour was pretty disappointing. I like the free tours because they work for tips so they are enthusiastic and have interesting and funny stories. The guide was enthusiastic, but he didn’t have much interesting info. I get that Sydney doesn’t have the long history of somewhere like Budapest or Prague, but there is some interesting stuff, like how did the society work as a prison colony. With such a large group we couldn’t really ask questions.

Aside from the Opera House, probably my favorite part of the tour was when we went by the fountain from The Matrix. This is a bad picture of it, but you can really recognize it in the scene with Neo and the woman in the red dress.

After the tour we walked to Chinatown. Yanmei has been to Sydney before, 10 years ago and she had fond memories of a dumpling restaurant in Chinatown. So our mission was to try to find that restaurant, although she didn’t remember the name or exact location. We eventually found the correct street from her memories, but the restaurant must have closed or changed owners since her last visit since we couldn’t find it.

One other funny thing we saw was this “ambulance”, which I just couldn’t understand what it is for.

David

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Brisbane to Sydney

Our second day in Brisbane it rained on and off. We did go to the Lonely Pine Koala Sanctuary.

Tasmanian Devils

Ostrich

Update: I think this is actually an Emu, not an Ostrich

Kangaroos

Dingo

The reason Yanmei likes staying at Airbnb’s is mainly so she can use the kitchen and cook. It saves money and is probably quite a bit healthier than eating out.

It was a pretty neat loft we stayed in.

The next day we started South towards Sydney. We considered flying during our planning, since domestic flights are pretty inexpensive, but decided to drive instead. We can see the countryside and it is just convenient to have a car. Plus this way Yanmei can bring all her cooking supplies along, which would be trouble on a plane.

The first part of the journey was along the Gold Coast, which sounds great, but the reality was it was just a pretty nondescript major highway with trees blocking and views. We stopped for lunch in Byron Bay, where we saw some skydivers floating down. After that we continued to Port Macquarie where we stayed for the night. It was a total of about 6.5 hours of driving, which doesn’t sound too bad, but the seats aren’t very comfortable in our car. It is a Mitsubishi Outlander.

The next morning we continued south. It was more picturesque, and we stopped briefly at lighthouse beach.

Huge, beautiful beach and hardly anyone was using it. The other cool thing we saw was a pod of dolphins surfing in on the big waves. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any good pics of that.

We stopped in a little town called Bulahdelah for lunch, then continued south to arrive in Sydney by about 3:45pm, just before rush hour traffic.

David

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Brisbane, Australia

We arrived in Brisbane two days ago, it is about a 3.5 hour flight from Christchurch. We didn’t realize it when we booked the flight, but we arrived on Australia Day, which is their equivalent of 4th of July. We arrived at around 5pm and by the time we got through customs, got our rental car, did a bit of grocery shopping and checked into our Airbnb it was dark. We are farther north, but I think it is mainly a quirk of the time zones that causes sunset in Brisbane to be more than two hours earlier than Christchurch.

We were a bit lazy our first day in Brisbane, slept in, and didn’t get going until after lunch. First we went to the Queen Street Mall.

It was basically just a big street mall with a good range of shops. We each bought a couple of things, but as usual we have to limit our purchases to what we can fit in our small bags. My plan this time was I brought mostly disposable clothes (like the plain white T-shirt in today’s pics) so I can throw them and replace them with new items I buy.

After that we walked over and took a ride on the Brisbane Wheel.

Also in that picture you can see their river ferry at the bottom left. After the wheel we took the ferry to Eat Street. The ferry is really nice, it is like a big water bus. Most ferries I’ve been on just go back and forth between two ports, but this one goes up and down the river making a dozen stops or so. The stops are quick, like 30 seconds, just enough to let people on and off. They had it down to a science, tie to the pier, lower the gangplank, open the gate, close the gate, raise the gangplank, untie and go. It was a powerful catamaran too so it got up to speed quickly, but was very stable.

Yanmei enjoying the fresh air and sunshine on the ferry. The main drawback to the ferry is it has to follow the Brisbane river, which isn’t straight, so it can take longer than alternative transportation. Here was our route:

Eat Street is another container mall, made from shipping containers, but it is almost all food. So it is like a giant food court but all independents, no McDonalds, KFC or other franchises. It was like a big gathering of static food trucks. They also had a few stages with live musicians.

Cool french fry on a stick made from a whole potato. Yanmei said she “wasn’t hungry”, but when I gave it to her to try this happened:

After dinner we headed back to our room.

David