love affair with sydney

Getting to know and starting to fall in love with Sydney required almost no effort. Rather than set an ambitious sightseeing agenda, Rob and I spent most of our days walking around different neighborhoods, including Surry Hills, Darling Harbour, Newtown, Darlinghurst/Oxford Street, and The Rocks. Here are some photos from our self-led tour of the city.

Visiting the Strand Arcade, a shopping arcade in the CBD, open since 1892 and known for featuring some of Australia's best women's designers.


Having drinks at The Hero of Waterloo, a pub with an authentic feel located in The Rocks.


One of the highlights of Sydney was spending time with Elliot, Jay, and Stephanie, friends from New York who were finishing out their last law school semester (yay!) in Australia and New Zealand.


Visiting the Sydney Aquarium, which had a really impressive shark tank with two glass tunnels running underneath it, the requisite resident saltwater croc, a seal sanctuary, and, most importantly, no rules against bringing ice cream through the exhibits.

landing at the opera house

Rob and I pretty much ran to the opera house as soon as we got to Sydney. It is easily one of the most spectacular architectural structures I have ever seen. I'll spare you from any futile attempts to be poetic and cut to the real purpose of this post - photos of ME at the opera house!


We devoted the entire day to the opera house, taking the hour-long tour in the late afternoon, having an evening cocktail at the Opera Bar,


and catching a hilarious performance by Varla Jean Merman, which was held in The Studio, the smallest performance space at the opera house.


What a great start to our upcoming 8 days in Sydney. We clearly saved the best city for last.

darwin. hot.

It’s hot in Darwin. Really hot. Any day like this in New York would be declared a heat wave, but in Darwin, this is the norm, at least until the dry season ends in late October. Darwin is a small and isolated town. For most visitors, it’s a departure point for Kakadu, one of Australia’s biggest national parks. For us, however, Kakadu would have to wait for another visit. Although it can be done in a day trip, we were just not up for the 3-hour drive to Kakadu nor spending a full-day in the stifling equatorial heat.

Despite Darwin’s remote location, it is modern and even sophisticated. At the suggestion of our excellent travel consultant at the Tourism Top End information center, we took an evening harbor cruise on the Alfred Nobel, which included a delicious top-rate meal, gorgeous views of the coastline, and a breathtaking sunset.


On Monday, we set off on a day trip to Litchfield National Park with Wallaroo Eco Tours (which, by the way, I highly recommend). Even though Litchfield is not as famous as Kakaku, it, apparently, is no less spectacular. However, before heading off to the park, we stopped at the Adelaide River to see the jumping crocodiles. These aren’t just any crocodiles, but the legendary Australian salties, which are extremely dangerous predators, as explained here.


Getting the crocs to jump out of the water entailed luring one with a big hunk of sashimi tied onto the end of a stick and bobbing the meat in an up and down motion in hopes that the salty will jump up and snatch the bait. Although a few of the salties we accosted rejected our food, these guys were hungry.


So was Hannibal, one of the largest resident salties in the Adelaide, who is about 5.5 M long and 70 years old (or so they think), and maybe just as scary as the Hannibal Lechter, the character after whom he was named.


After the crocodile cruise, our guide from Wallaroo, Louise, drove us down to Litchfield to show us the park’s main attractions, including its famous termite mounds. We saw two types of mounds, the cathedral mounds, which are built by the termites from the ground up with dirt and termite saliva,


and magnetic termite mounds, so called because they all face north-south to avoid the direct solar heat. According to Louise, the only place in the world in which magnetic termite mounds can be found is within 80 miles of Darwin.


We spent the rest of the day swimming in some of Litchfield’s famous freshwater swimming holes, including Florence Falls and Buley Rockhole.

mooching around brisbane

I was not excited about visiting Brisbane. From travelers and residents alike, I repeatedly heard that there is not much to do in Brisbane and that the best use of my time would be to leave the city and stay in one of the adjacent towns like Gold Coast or Byron Bay. Brisbane may not be a destination for sightseeing, but it’s one of those cities that draws you in and makes you forget that you’re a tourist. Although our stay in Brisbane was brief, we had just enough time to become enamored with Brisbane's spectacular riverscape, meet some really lovely locals, and experience the city's spirited and non-pretentious nightlife scene.

One of the best locations for people-watching in Brisbane is the Queen Street Mall, an area of pedestrian walkways located in Brisbane's CBD. The promenade is lined with shops, cafes, and restaurants.



We also spent a good amount of time tooling around South Bank, an area located on the banks of the Brisbane River with pedestrian walkways, bike paths, cafes, restaurants, bars, and even a man-made beach.


Just upriver from South Bank, you can rock climb at certain designated areas along the river.


And, of course, no day in Australia would feel complete without the requisite gorgeous sunset.

cairns wrap-up

Rob and I had a difficult time leaving the Shangri-La. So difficult, in fact, that we decided to extend our stay in Cairns for a couple of days. Although Cairns doesn't offer much in terms of nightlife--at least for the older crowd to which we apparently belong--there were plenty of cafes, restaurants, and ice cream shops to keep us occupied ... or at least full. One of my most memorable meals was dinner at Perrotta's, an Italian/Australian outdoor spot where I had a superbly delicious mixed greens salad topped with pumpkin, pomegranate seeds, and popcorn.


Although Rob and I spent a good amount of time hanging out in the lobby of our hotel basking in the free wireless, we managed to fit some sightseeing into our schedules and rode the SkyRail Rainforest Cableway, a 7.5 km long cableway which crosses over and through the North Queensland rainforest.


According to SkyRail's website, this rainforest is the oldest continually surviving rainforest on earth. Rather than just waste time merely observing the scenery, we held a photo shoot inside the cable car.


The SkyRail, which from end-to-end takes about 70 minutes, makes two stops inside the rainforest, the first at Red Peak Station and the second at Barron Falls.


At Barron Falls, we met this adorably cute spider! (By the way, this shot was taken from at least 10 feet below the spider's web on a modest zoom setting.) I'm sure that he's deadly.

Well, maybe the spider wasn’t as deadly as it looked, but this bird, the cassowary, is apparently quite vicious and has been known to attack—and even kill—humans. Of course, Rob and I spent a good 5-10 minutes getting up close and personal with him not knowing that we were one flash bulb away from having him jump one of us and rip open our chest with his razor-sharp talons.

Next stop Brisbane, where we plan to take a break from nature and get back in touch with our city roots.

certified!

Somehow I got myself up at 5:50 am for the first dive of the day. Not being a morning person, this was almost as painful as Reef Quest. (Just kidding. I'd rather wake up before 6 am every day for the rest of my life than relive Reef Quest.) I forced myself out of bed, put on my bathers (I love that word), and caught the sunrise from my cabin window.


The dive ended up being a challenging one. The current was pretty strong and visibility was low. However, I managed to pass my skills tests and after one more dive earned my open water certification! Clearly, looking dorky in a wet suit and snorkel mask was a criterion for earning certification.



With my PADI certification on the books, I was now free to go on fun dives. Obviously, I would be doing all of the remaining dives with Rob. Rob was not only a superlative navigator, but had an excellent eye for tracking down harder-to-find sea creatures, like Nemo!


That night, it was my turn to get thrown to the sharks on my first night dive. I, like Rob, managed to survive this experience, and came out of the water smiling (but only because Rob told me to for this photo).


In fact, the whole team survived.


The following day, Rob lent me his underwater camera for my last dive and I captured a couple of cool things, including:

another Nemo


and this school of fish hanging out in perfect formation in a coral bommie (look closely to see how organized they are!)


With nine or so new dives memorialized in our respective dive log books, Rob and I packed up, bid goodbye to the crew and our scuba mates, and made our way back to Cairns. The return trip was a little windy, but the backdrop was stunning.