Sydney Work Trip!

Jun 19th through June 22nd

Saw a nice sunrise on the way in and was lucky enough to be on the side of the plane that saw the bridge and opera house.

But the entire first week was work stuff.

Saturday, June 22nd

Finished all the big stuff by midday, so Travis and I took half the day off and headed over to the Opera House.

The building is of course beautiful but there are details no one shows close up. There's a herringbone pattern to the sails made up of white ceramic tiles.

The inside of the sails are all green aged copper, so must have been a sight to see before the oxidized. We walked all the way to the end of it's pier to get pictures and just decompress.

You could see the people doing the walk to the top of the bridge too. Was a beautiful day, the ocean smelled nice and it provided some great headspace for the 10 hour all day upgrade tomorrow.

Jun 23rd through June 26th

Wednesday, June 26th

Wednesday was technically our last official workday but with everything already taken care of and no surprises, Travis and I headed to the zoo. We again headed to the Opera House transit station and this time took a ferry across the harbor. Beautiful view.

Got to see all Australian hits.

Koala...

Komodo Dragons?

Lizard thing?

Spikey Tortoise?

Uh... Turkeys?

Lemurs!?!?!? Ok, only some of these are Australian...

But also Tigers! And Otters! And Fishing Cats!. (oh my)

A very bored seal

The spider show... NOPE NOPE NOPE

A wombat taking a nap, llamas at the petting exhibit, meerkats...

More Australian favorites, the quokka I couldn't get to smile at us

Kangaroo in an amazingly open enclosure. Just separated by those branches, the were absolutely free to roam up to us and get really close.

Some scaaaarily large emu. I swear they looked bigger in person. 5 ft tall at least.

Including the two platypi? Platypoi? Platypusses? Dunno, but I do know that they were so active I couldn't get a picture of the little bastards. And I was too tired to remember to do video. 😑

Thursday, June 27th

Thursday vacation officially began! I said goodbye to Travis and hopped a flight North to Cairns. There, despite being the last luggage off the plane, I was still able to meet the scheduled bus to Port Douglas. While waiting the wind kept blowing my 4 wheeled luggage away. I keep telling everyone two wheels is better. 😁 No footage because my phone rebooted during filming.

Climate here in Cairns feels very much like Hawaii. Warm and humid and fresh. All the signs say rainforest, so there you go.

Passed an entire herd of cairns along the road. Going too fast to get my own picture. I stole one from Google.

Arrived at the hotel super tired and just had dinner at the hotel restaurant. But then slept in this fancy looking room.

Friday, June 28th

Friday is diving day!!! Got picked up by the shuttle and taken out to the large catamaran run by Sailaway.

And three very tall and pretty women. The day was just gorgeous and the sail 4 miles out to Low Isles was exactly the break I needed. The isle itself was very tiny and something straight out of pirates of the Caribbean.

We took a smaller shuttle boat to the island and immediately got to snorkeling. The first half of the day provided excellent visibility and we saw an incredible variety of coral and tons of fish. Some of the locals had to be almost 3 feet long and North of 50 pounds. We saw some very large mackarels, and incredibly colorful parrotfish. Saw a few huuuuge giant clams that had to be 4 feet wide. We ran into one of the rare turtles and I opted out of the island walk and went back in to the water to find myself Ina school of 60 or 70 of the foot and a half long white fish they have. And some monstrously large sea cucumbers. Gross. After the morning swim session, we got shuttled back to the catamaran for lunch. After food, we dove again, this time we were shuttled up the current from the boat and drifted along the route back. More tons of fish but nothing different from the first half. Visibility was also worse since this was just following low tide.

We wrapped up snorkeling back to the large bag fish that were lurking under the boat. I assume expecting to be fed... moochers.

We shucked out of our gear then sailed back. It was a little choppier on the way back. No worse than what we had in the Hawaiian Chieftain.

After showering back at the hotel, I took a bus out to Port Douglas proper and had dinner at Rattle and Him. Local Australian food so authentic, you can order and pick it up your damn self. 😁 I sat in the back of the restaurant where it was open air to the jungle and the local Barramundi was delicious.

Saturday, June 29th

Saturday was the long bus back to Cairns airport and the flight back to Sydney. True to Rain forest spirit we hit a torrential downpour on the drive to Cairns.

Checked in to the way-too-cool-for-me hotel. Didn't realize it at booking, good lord, not me at all... The guys at work will be amused though.

But, I arrived back in Sydney on a mission. The week before I had heard fireworks on Saturday night and was too tired (read: lazy) to get to the other side of the hotel to see them directly. Uber driver didn't know any specifics and reception was similarly unsure. A lady also being checked in however was totally hip to the show and confirmed when and where. I headed over to Darling Harbor just before and caught a great, if small, show.

A nice welcome back.

Sunday, June 30th

Today I headed out to Manly beach to have lunch on the beach. Great time trying to get here, you take a ferry from Circular Quay and that was PACKED. Prices were 1/3 of normal, I guess they were trying to drum up winter business now that school was out. Anyways, I escaped the crush of people and walked down the main street from the ferry to the beach. It's basically Santa Monica's third street promenade except one end is on the beach.

The surfers were riding some really nice 6-8 foot waves and putting on a decent show.

The pigeons here are weird...

I ate yet another fish and chips meal as it's the thing to do here and stayed for an hour or two. It was also apparently a lovely day for sailing.

Headed back to find out that the Game of Thrones musical parody I thought I missed had exteded a few days, yet the new days were also sold out. So, I took it easy, got a meat pie at Harry's which the uber driver highly recommended and worked on the website. I did, however, book the Opera House tour for tomorrow.

Monday, July 1st

After the tour, I walked across the ferry lane to have lunch in the Rocks. Seems like a very distinctly older neighborhood, or at least the buildings looked it. Burger was good, view was good, signs were good. A+ in my book.

Tuesday, July 2nd

Grabbed dinner at this FANTASTIC Indian food restaurant I found. Sad I didn't find it earlier, it's as good as anything I've had in LA.

Then, one last visit to the opera house before I go, to pick up a souvenir.

And by then my back was starting to ache so not much flex in today. But Australia's been great and totally more to see on a longer visit.