G'Day From Sydney

I arrived in Sydney at 7 am on Friday. The plane flew over the course of the night and I didn't get to see anything from the window. That was a bit dissapointing but it made up for it when I got off the plane. The first thing I did was try to talk to as many Australians as I could in hopes of hearing their accents. I was thinking about it, the only real Australian accents I knew came from Crocodile Dundee and the late Steve Irwin so needless to say it was a bit of a novelty. I made it through customs at about 8:30 and got on the train to downtown Sydney. I thought that since the conversion rate is good for the US dollar here that I would be saving a good amount of money. I was right about that, but what I didn't see coming was the price of everything in Sydney. A water alone could be between 3 and 4 Australian dollars. Finding a meal for under 8 dollars is a rariety. The first sight of Sydney I got was after I departed from the train at Circular Quay Station (pronounced "circular key") was of the Sydney Opera House. As you can imagine, that is when it sunk in that I was in Sydney. I strolled about the town for a few hours before taking up a suggestion about a hostel called Wake Up. There is a section of Sydney that has most of the hostels in it and that is where this was located. I got my room, set down my stuff, and went straight back out, of course after a much needed shower. I went further past my hostel to a little park that had an open air market next to it. This market had anything you could imagine, well, more like anything a tourist could imagine buying. After browsing the aisles of stereotypical Australian souvenirs (boomerangs, stuffed kangaroo dolls, leather hats with crocodile teeth, etc.) I headed toward the Royal Botanical Gardens where the Opera House is located. The gardens were amazing with all sorts of plants that I had never seen before. They had a section devoted to the rainforest biome of Australia. In here, there were all sorts of crazy plants and the best thing about this area was the world's largest bat. It was some type of fruit bat that had about a 4-5 foot wingspan. There were around 4000 of them as noted by the guy cheking the hummus composition. I couldn't get over these bats in the middle of Sydney. I made my way down to the Opera House and checked it out. I had no idea that the arcs are actually made out of white and light blue tiles. They look completely different from up close than far away. After exploring the rest of the park and seeing spiders as big as my fist everywhere, and I do mean EVERYWHERE, I had to head back to the hostel to take a break. I had probably walked about 10 miles and was ready for some R and R. After laying down for a bit I started talking with this Dutch girl that was staying in the same room as me. She kindly invited me to go with her and a bunch of others to have some drinks at the Opera House and watch the sunset. I of course agreed and went with her to meet about 8 other people from all over Europe as well as some Canadians. There were people from England, Holland, Canada, and Norway. I was the only American and actually I had still not met a single American during my trip. We all picked up some Australian wine and headed to the Opera House. As you can imagine with a bunch of laid back travellers, we didn't make it on time to see the sunset but had a blast having our drinks at night on the steps of the Opera House. There were these little creatures that kept running around us that I later found out were what they called possums. Trust me, they looked nothing close to the possum we know. After some time exchanging stories and cultures, we headed back toward the hostel. There is a bar right under the hostel that we all went to. The bars don't really have a closing time so once jet lag started to catch me I decided to retire. The next morning I awoke to one of the Brits in my room saying "Alex! You missed check out mate!" I sprung up from my bed and realized that I had forgotten about the 10 am check out. I was 30 minutes late and actually didn't feel in that much of a hurry. I got a shower and packed up my stuff while the English people all laughed at my accent. In fact, they started to compare me to the turtle from Finding Nemo. I obviously responded with the typical "Tony Blair is Bush's puppet" and "the last good thing to come from England was an American revolt" and the like, but there were just too many. Anyway, it was all in good nature. I left the hostel without getting any late charges and said goodbye to my new friends. I had a train to catch at 3 and had to find where it was departing from. The day I had in Sydney was spectacular and I would be very upset if I didn't get another two days there in a week or so.