The Land Down Under

Sydney 2/10

Sometimes, a city is a city is a city… But sometimes… sometimes no matter how many pictures you take, how many times you look, how many times you breathe ‘wow’… sometimes you just can’t help but be awestruck by the city your in.

My favorite city that I’ve visited was New Orleans. My least favorite, Anchorage.

But man, Sydney is incredible. It's clean, it's walkable, it's fun... the list goes on.

The breathtaking feeling of when I rounded the corner and saw the Sydney Opera House for the first time, the roaring of crowd applause at the end of the symphony in the opera house (literally. Literally the longest applause I’ve ever heard), the joy in my heart when it was down pouring rain outside and shauna and I were nestled in a cute chocolate restaurant (Guylian), those are all feelings I will cherish for a lifetime.

After docking, we went through immigration pretty swiftly. Everyone was given a time to exit, and they had to be at a zero count before anyone could get back on ship. Australia is pretty serious about this stuff, as we were “chosen at random” to have our stateroom searched by a drug dog. He was a cute yellow lab.

Anyway.

Once we disembarked we walked along the water for 40 minutes admiring the skyline until we found ourself at the Sydney harbor bridge. We were able to walk across the whole thing for free, and decided to spend an extra $15 AUD to climb the lookout point. This was really nice because we were able to get a good view of the city, the opera house, and the bridge, with no other people around!

Then we walked through The Rocks and arrived at the Opera House to watch Simone Young conduct Mahler’s First Symphony. It was a smaller venue than I imagined, was filled with red seats and warm lighting. Where we sat was neat, because we were actually behind the symphony. So I watched the show as if I were a part of it, seeing Simone’s intense face expressions as she conducted, and the little details that each instrumentalist did during the show that I may have missed in a more traditional seat.

Afterwards, like I mentioned, we found a chicken panini in a cute shop before heading to the botanical gardens. At the start of them is the governors house, which was neat to catch a glimpse of.

Just by chance, when walking back towards the direction of the ship, we stopped by St. Mary’s Cathedral. I am so happy we did. It’s the best cathedral I’ve ever been to. It was beautiful. It looked like a backdrop, as if I reached out to touch it it would topple over like a movie scene.

We made our last stop at the Sydney Tower around 6:30. We had wanted to watch sunset at the top of the tower, but sunset wasn’t until 8:00. So, we skipped out on going to the top.

When we finally made our way to the place the shuttle dropped us off in the morning, there was no shuttle to be seen. No problem, we’ll wait…. And we waited and waited and no shuttle. Finally after 20 minutes we decide no shuttle is coming. Luckily, shauna and I are two fairly well traveled and competent people, and we found our way to the correct spot on our own (since we don’t have an internet package and there was no WiFi). I haven’t been that happy to see a bus in a LONG time.

By the time we got back on the ship we were exhausted. The plans we had to go out on the town for a few drinks was quickly replaced with a pasta dinner (shrimp for shauna) on the ship, pajamas, and sleep by 10 pm… because… we had our alarms set for 4:30am to go to The Blue Mountains!

• 2/10 7:00am

Currently writing as I’m abroad a train to the blue mountains. A few notes

1: this is the first time I’ve been on a train since Alaska

2: we made it on the train with just 4 minutes to spare because the Uber driver got lost in the cruise terminal due to construction (he was great though!)

3: it’s been a foggy morning train drive with not much scenic yet

4: shauna can sleep anywhere

1:58 pm

Shauna “do you think we’ll make it?”

Me “we have 6 minutes…”

….

Abby “GIRLS! GET IN! I found us a ride!”

2:01 pm arrive to the train station

2:04 pm train departs back to Sydney central station

There’s something thrilling about the anxiety of nearly missing the train you need in order to make it back to your cruise ship in time… luckily, we made it, and it was a story for the books!

As we did the ship sail away, we waved goodbye to the city by going under the Sydney Harbor Bridge, passing the Sydney Opera House one more time, and sailing alongside the most sail boats I've ever seen at one time, which I thought was quite ironic.

P.S. I learned cockatoos are wild in Australia

P.P.S. the blue mountains are absolutely striking.