Connections back home was pretty horrendous when we were over there, mainly because of two things: 1) The entire cellular network over in Australia and New Zealand is GSM, which my cell phone doesn't support. So zero phone calls. 2) My iPass connections were hardly working at all. Even though I was supposed to be able to connect to a bunch of the wireless networks that were showing up, it was not getting through. So mainly I had to get internet access by making local calls via modem to connect to the iPass network, which meant connecting at 56k (usually worse, though, like 33k). Even some of the local calls didn't work. Anyways, the end result is that our hotel bill end up having a bunch of local calls on it, each call was about $2. I guess if I had known that local calls weren't free, I would have just called once to connect and left the laptop connected for one ginormous 150hr phone call. =p

I had called the front desk the previous night to ask them if we could postpone check-out until later since our flight was like at 6pm (which is what they recommended doing when we first checked-in, to see if it was possible), but they told us that they needed to get the room ready for the next guests. But they were delighted to hold on to our bags while we explored the city some more.

Originally, the plan was to go to a Koala Park that is a little bit north of Sydney, but since we figured there wouldn't be much to do beyond what we already got to experience at Featherdale, we scrapped that and instead did some more exploring. First up was the Harbour Bridge, but we stopped by a little café on the way for breakfast. Patricia ordered some monster breakfast while I ordered a little something to munch on (I think it was a basket of fries and garlic bread). Well, that turned out to be a mistake since Patricia only ended up being able to eat just part of the breakfast, so I had to eat a bunch of it too, which was way too much food for me.

We passed a cute little farmer's market being set up on the way to the bridge -- we thought about getting Emery some wine or Angelique some soap, but they were not quite open yet. When we got to the bridge, the Pylon Lookout wasn't open yet, so we decided to go a little ways down the bridge. It had a pretty good view of the Opera House, but I'd have to say that being on the Brooklyn Bridge was definitely a better experience for me. Patricia was not doing so well with the heights, so we quickly walked to the other end, and I suggested to her that she should take the train back to the CBD and she could do some more shopping. We could meet up with each other again at about 1pm for lunch at the front of the Queen Victoria building (which is a big shopping mall). It made more sense to meet there than back at the hotel, since it'd be a little out of the way for both of us. In case we couldn't find each other there, we'd meet back at the hotel at 3pm.

This time I made sure she had the TenTravel Pass. The previous day, she didn't have it, but she ended up not needing it anyways because she apparently found the one bus that was free and just went up and down St. George street, which our hotel is on. It did take her four or five tries before she happened on that bus though. I didn't think I would need the TenTravel Pass since I tend to be fairly quick on my feet. Plus Patricia had all the books with all the bus routes, so I wouldn't really know which bus to take. If worst came to worse, I would just take a taxi. Plus I had my GPS.

So I made sure Patricia made it to the train station, then headed back up to the bridge. Not sure if I caught her train by the time I made it back to the bridge, but I waved anyways. Now that I didn't have to worry about Patricia, I made my way back across the bridge, this time taking a shot of the Opera House every twenty steps. Hopefully I can put it together in an animated gif or something and post it.

By the time I made it back, the Pylon Lookout was open, so I headed up. Inside the Pylon was a museum where they described the history of the bridge. I thought it was interesting how they built the two halves with these huge cables holding the halves from falling into the water. And then when the halves were finished, they slowly loosened the cables until the two halves met in the middle, and then the bridge was finished! The lookout also had little markers on the top to tell you what direction various points of interest were.

Afterwards, I walked along the harbor to the Sydney Aquarium. I was originally planning to buy a Sydney Aquarium ticket the previous day for Patricia since I thought she would be coming along, but I couldn't since they only sold the combo pass at the Wildlife World, not the Aquarium-only pass. So it was a good thing, since Patricia wasn't coming to the Aquarium with me.

The Aquarium was an...interesting experience. I think I'm the same way about fish as Patricia is about birds. To me, the fishies all tend to blend together, so I'm not very interested in them. You have to be a pretty unique or interesting fish for me to want to look. So there was not much for me to look at, except for most of the standard stuff: jellyfish, seahorses, and then they had some underwater tunnel exhibits where you could see sharks (it seems every aquarium tries to lure in patrons with special shark exhibits, so by now they are just more fishies to me), dugongs and sea turtles. Probably the only really interesting thing was the platypus exhibit, where I got to see a platypus fairly close. (We did see a platypus on the surface of a lake when we were leaving the Jenolan Caves, but it was a little ways off and it dove down before I could get my camera on).

It's not a bad aquarium, but I guess I'm a little spoiled by having gone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The more aggravating part of it was that there were tons of kids around. And actually, the kids aren't so bad, even though they are constantly yelling and running and you have to watch your step lest you kick or trample one. The bad part was all the parents, who it seemed were continually getting in my way. Especially the ones with strollers. Blech. And oh yeah, because all the kids were on vacation, the Aquarium was doing something special to attract them -- SpongeBob SquarePants! Yes, several of the tanks had random SpongeBob SquarePants characters in them that the kids could "collect" (they mark a little checkbox when they see that character). So that was distracting too. Oh well.

Once I got out of that circus house, I saw that I was running totally late, so I found a cab outside a nearby hotel and asked him to take me to Queen Victoria building. He didn't want to take me -- he told me that it was "right there", just go to the signal and make a left. I was like, "Oh." So I went down. It actually was right there, I for some reason that it was a bit farther. But still, it would have been faster for him to drive me there.

I got there and didn't see Patricia around (I was just a couple minutes early), so I took a look around the building. Turns out there were four different entrances, one on each side of the building. The south one was definitely the main entrance, since there was a courtyard with a couple statues there and on the front of the building there were big banners saying "Queen Victoria Building" or something. But the two middle entrances led in to some big staircases to the upper floors and the information desk. Well, I decided wandering around from entrance to entrance was a sure way to keep missing Patricia if she was doing the same thing, so I sat down at the restaurant at the front of the building and had a hot chocolate to wait for her.

While I was sipping my hot chocolate, this elderly lady came up to me and started asking me questions about her phone. Something about wanting to know how to get her phone to do something. Well, I couldn't really understand what she wanted (she was speaking Cantonese), but at least as was able to communicate with her that I didn't know...anything, I guess.

Speaking of Cantonese and Chinese people, Sydney is filled with them! Guess they were right when they said that a lot of people from Hong Kong immigrated there in the 80s. Basically, I have never seen/heard so many Cantonese people in my life (probably because I've never been to Hong Kong). Not even Shenzhen or the Bay Area come anywhere close to what I encountered in Sydney. In fact, Central station is pretty close to Chinatown in Sydney; one time when we exited out to the street, we couldn't see a single caucasian person, only twenty to thirty Chinese people. Kind of weird and cool at the same time.

Well, after paying for my hot chocolate, it was twenty minutes past time, so I decided to make a quick round of the the other entrances to see if maybe Patricia was waiting at one of them. And indeed she was, sitting at one of the big staircases, despite it definitely not being the front of the building at all, which is where we specifically agreed to meet. Oh well. She had picked up a few more items and we ended up grabbing lunch at a food court that was nearby. This time I was smart -- I only ordered a small piece of cheesecake (banana mocha lemon tart cheesecake, or something ridiculous like that), and Patricia ordered a huge burger and fries; I had to end up eating some of that.

We had a little more time to kill, so I hung around while Patricia looked at some bags, and we eventually made our way to a park and church nearby. We rested a little bit on the lawn outside, then went in -- it was a pretty typical Catholic cathedral, with all the little alcoves for the different saints. When we left we saw someone outside with a wedding dress on -- she must have been freezing...

On our way back out of the park, we passed the giant chessboard that early some people were playing chess on. All the people were gone (except for some nearby tables where they were still playing regular-size chess), but it looked like someone had also left their grocery bags too. Or maybe they were left there on purpose. It looked like there were three or four loaves of bread, and the birds and pigeons were attacking it. I tried to get them to get closer to me, but they were still pretty afraid of me, even after sitting still for a while. So I gave up and we took a taxi back to the hotel to pick up our bags.

Public transportation is pretty good at Sydney, I think we got around fine and a car wouldn't have really helped us any. There were a few things that might have been interesting to see further out in the suburbs, but I don't think we missed out on much.

The day wasn't over yet -- we had to get to our accomodations in New Zealand, but I'll save that for the next post...