Week 3

Well, it’s my last day in Sydney, these last two weeks went by so fast! Tonight my friend Vanessa and I are taking a 12 hour overnight bus to Melbourne, where we will stay for a week before heading to Tasmania! I’m really excited about going there, it’s supposed to be absolutely beautiful! And we’ve heard that Melbourne always has something artsy going on, like exhibits and live music, so hopefully we will catch something cool there.

We got back to the familiar ‘charm’ at the Elephant hostel after a 3 day stay in Bondi beach, which was also beautiful. I think I’ve found my favorite adjective for Australia! We stayed in a similarly ‘quaint’ hostel about 5 minutes walking distance from the beach, where we spent 3 days lying in the sun and playing in the water with some friends we made in our room the first night there, after sneaking a box of goon up past reception. For whatever reason they wouldn’t let anyone drink it at the hostel, even though other (read: way more expensive) alcohol was allowed, which was frustrating.

I’m worried I’m starting to sound a bit like an alcoholic with all these posts about goon, but I’d forgotten how crucial drinking is to the backpacking scene! I swear, it’s all for practical purposes. Aside from speeding up the friend making process quite a bit, it’s crucial if you want to get a decent night’s sleep in a room with 7 and often more other people tossing and turning, snoring, coming in and out, turning the lights on and off, having conversations at full volume, and generally acting as if it was their own private room. I have noticed one benefit to sleeping in a dorm, however; I can once again read my Stephen King books before falling asleep without being scared to turn off the light, or get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night! So that’s been nice. I’m burning through the new one, Doctor Sleep right now, it’s a sequel to The Shining, and it’s soooo good!

In case anyone was too worried, though, you can rest assured that we have been doing a ton of walking and hiking around, enough that I think we are still coming out on the healthy end of the spectrum at the end of the day! We did a walk from Bondi beach to Coogie beach that goes right along the coast and passes 4 or 5 other hidden little white sand beaches and coves full of surfers and boogie-boarders an scuba divers along the way. It was really fun, and the views were amazing! We copped out and ended up taking the bus on the return trip, because it took us about 4 hours to do the whole walk. That was a surprise, and I probably wouldn’t have worn flip-flops if I had known…

At one point we stopped for a snack at a lookout over the water, and kept seeing these huge splashes way off in the distance. It took us a few minutes to realize that we were watching whales breaching! It was so exciting, I’ve never seen a whale outside of SeaWorld before, and that was definitely not the same. From then on I couldn’t stop scanning the water for more. Every once in a while you would be looking right at the spot where they would come up, and you could see their dark backs or white bellies or even a flip of a tail. It was incredible!

This weekend has been the International Fleet Review in Sydney Harbor, which as far as I can tell is a lot like Fleet Week in San Fran, except last night they did an amazing fireworks show over the harbor! It was so much fun, there were thousands of people crammed downtown trying to get a view, and we actually ended up with a pretty good spot. There were fireworks going off in all directions, even from the tops of some of the tall office buildings behind us, a light show, and projections about the Australian navy on the sails of the Opera house! They were by far the best fireworks I’ve ever seen.

I’m going to try and wrap this post up with a picture, if it works I’ll add a bunch on the next one. Wish me luck!