Backwards!

After a few months with friends and family in the states, I'm back in Australia about to start work again. Now that I have a ridiculous camera, expect a ridiculous amount of photos to be posted!

Yea this sucked a lot. I didn't get much sleep, but that wasn't all of the reason.

It's almost impossible to get comfortable and stay in that position for even a few hours. All the flashing flights from the movies playing, as well as the turbulence, kept me awake for most of this time.

^ Flying into Sydney. It was overcast and began to rain as we got in.

The 2 hour flight from Sydney to Adelaide sounds like a breeze after 14 hours, but it almost felt just as long. I was dying to get off the plane. Outside of the airport it was around 100*F. So I walked around, ate some food, got lost, and finally found my temporary housing for the next 4 days:

Air conditioning! After all that, I pretty much set things up and passed out. More pix and stories to come!

Between Marina's travels around the East coast of Australia, she stopped back in Sydney to meet me for a weekend. But before that happened, I cabbed to the airport and ran into a coworker, who was consequently flying on the same plane to Sydney as I was. So when we got there, I shared a taxi with him into Chinatown and started my walk across town toward the infamous Opera House. These are a few things I ran into.

A gold tree!

From the second I got out of the cab, everything was exciting and new and I found myself smiling as I walked around. It was a feeling I unfortunately didn't get coming to Adelaide. Sydney has a magical way of surprising you with something new on every block.

I was told the main street through downtown Sydney is George St. so I walked along that until breaking off to follow cool things I found. As with Adelaide, street names change after crossing George St, and they also change to Park St. when there is a park conveniently placed somewhere. In one instance we stayed on the same road while driving but the name changed 3 times in 3 blocks. It's really a good idea not to drive at all in the city, so back to walking!

I love these ^ because they usually show you something really awesome you might not have seen. Vancouver has these too, but not nearly as many as Sydney.

I decided to take a route closer to the water and came up under the Harbour Bridge.

People were climbing as I walked under. $200 to do it though. Screw that.

Almost there!

So much like San Francisco it's ridiculous!

Annnnnd I finally made it to the harbor!

The Sydney Opera House in all it's glory!

Shark Island! Wonder what's there!

Tons of ways to spend copious amounts of money in this town.

Needless to say I could take pix of that thing forever. Personally I wasn't all that impressed with the exterior, although I've heard it really gets amazing when you go inside.

Ok I'd had enough of the big seashell thing, so I walked on over to the botanic gardens.

It being Saturday, I came across a massive public market.

Much like San Francisco, the environment and mood can change within only a few blocks. Within about 45min walking distance, you can see a ton! I was walking for around 6 hours, zig-zagging around random side streets, and now my feet are paying for it.

Across the bay to North Sydney. According to my cab driver, the traffic is so bad that if you have friends over there, you just never see them.

Something was goin on, but I had bigger birds to catch.

Huge birds!

One of the widest trees I've ever seen ^

This was an inflated flower that would open and close with the wind.

Across the water in the park, Sydney is way more laid back.

Walking back through the gardens, I came upon a group of about 15 people standing in the path looking up. The tree above us was full of giant bats! One was climbing around as I took this, and at sunset all of them awaken and fly off into the night sky above the opera house. It was definitely a sight to see!