Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

• Filling out paperwork isn’t the best way to start the morning, but at least exit immigration isn’t any hassle and getting our GST refund from Liz’s opals is a breeze.
• Just a few hours after getting up near dawn, the plane takes us into night again. I find it very strange to have trouble identifying the stars, but that passes as we near the equator and Orion becomes prominent. As we approach the California coast, the colors of the approaching dawn through the clear skies at 40,000 feet are just phenomenal>
• For a while I had steeled myself for grilling by customs upon daring to attempt re-entry to my own country, but the only thing the officer questions us about is whether we cleaned the dirt from our shoes after visiting the wineries. The bag handlers as we check our luggage back in are quite chipper, perhaps everyone is just in a good mood since their workday has just started.
• Having left her in the care of strangers for 10 days and then galumphing up the stairs with noisy suitcases, Chloe isn’t inclined to greet us right away and will only talk from under the bed. Within a half hour, all seems forgiven.
• My higher mind tells me that I have been travelling for almost 24 straight hours, 14 of them in a single vehicle, but all other concepts of time and space are completely distorted. Two dawns, arriving before we left…this is the most surreal day I have ever experienced.

Looking back on my thoughts over the past ten days, it seems like I’ve griped about a bunch of things, but I really did enjoy this experience. Some of the annoyances were due to the first part of the trip being for work rather than vacation. I’ll also admit to some disappointment that after travelling all that way Sydney wasn’t more, well, different; I liked the feel of a big city and the comforts of common language and general culture, but part of me was hoping for a bit more variation beyond accents and eucalypts. However, it was great to finally get to experience a place that wasn’t America and to see in person those landmarks, places, flora, and fauna that up until now I’ve only seen in books and on TV. Hopefully we’ll someday get the chance to revisit a couple spots in Sydney, then take in some of the other places Australia has to offer.

• Finally I get the chance to check out the views from the southeast pylon of the Harbour Bridge, but unfortunately the weather isn’t as good as when Liz came here last week. Other than a shot of us both against the SOH I can’t top any of the pictures she already took, but the live view is quite impressive despite the breezes. What an impressive harbor!
• Like any good tourists, we take some time to stroll through some of the shops in The Rocks. In many ways it’s not that much different than some of the ’boutique’ areas along Southport or Armitage, but no where else have I encountered a shop dedicated to didjeridoos. I really liked the enthusiasm of the guy who took the time to tell us what the different types of artwork meant and then provided a quick lesson in how to play the instrument.
• I’d heard about Manly from several people, and while it did have some impressive looking beaches it didn’t seem all that distinct from any number of beach towns, complete with surfers (even in the drizzle and cold of early spring!) and touristy souvenir shops. Perhaps it might have been more impressive on a warm, sunny summer’s day.
• Back over to Circular Quay for dinner, and while we both enjoyed our meals again the service was distinctly inattentive in our opinion. No doubt about it, there is definitely a different set of expectations about restaurant service here, it’s happened too frequently to simply have been a couple places having off nights. Are we really such high-maintenance people? I dislike the thought, but maybe the tipping customs in the USA really do result in better service.
• Other than finding safe, accessible spots for all the new treasures that have been purchased, packing at the end of a vacation is so much easier than at the beginning. It helps knowing that we got everything into these suitcases and just need to stuff things back in without regard to wardrobe selection, wrinkles, etc.

• Opera House tour. The exterior is still an amazing sight close up, but a lot of the interiors have a dated, late 60s/early 70s feel to them. Nothing too distinctive about the various performance rooms in the pedestal, but the main concert hall is quite impressive. We were a bit surprised at the slightly haphazard nature of the tour path–really, after years of tours on the half-hour, don’t they have this down to a science yet?–and the somewhat brusque style of the guide.
• Taronga Zoo is quite impressive. A bit tiring as it’s built on a couple of hills, but an amazing menagerie. Stunningly colored birds. Frolicking platypus and Tasmanian devil. Lazing wombats and lumbering echidnas. The kangaroo/wallaby enclosure is nice since there’s little barrier between us and them. Similarly impressive is the spiral walkway that leads up into the treetops to allow closer looks at the koalas, inactive as they are.
• We finish the day with dinner once again in Cockle Bay, and despite (or because of?) the business of the cafe we end up with better service. My (unshelled) prawns and curry rice come topped with pavlova, the typically Aussie dessert I tried the other night, but oddly enough it seems to work with the other flavors.

• Even earlier start today, but hey…we’re going to see kangaroos and drink wine!
• The Calga Springs Sanctuary seems mundane enough–a couple emus near the gate, a small wallaby hopping off into the bushes as we stroll up the walk–but when I turn the corner on the veranda to find a large mob of kangaroos to greet me I decide this is a cool spot. As I admire the roos and sip my coffe, Liz emits a mild shriek and sports a sour look as I turn around: a emu, lightning-fast and with a surprisingly long reach, has snatched her muffin! We thought the driver was joking, but they really do like muffins, apparently. She feels a little better after sharing the rest of my muffin, and then all is happiness again a few minutes later when she gets to shake hands with a joey.
• A number of phenomenal wines at McWilliams: semillon, chardonnay, sparkling pinot noir, shiraz, cabernet (and enough to make us both a bit tipsy!). Nice lunch, too, including emu prosiutto and kangaroo loaf (which is actually disappointing) along with more wine samples. This is the part that cost us an extra $20 when our tour was transferred at the last minute from the original company we booked with, but it seems well worth it.
• We learn why semillon is so prevalent in the Hunter Valley (very hot summers) at Rothbury Estate, and we have some very nice cheeses at Cooper Winery, but the wines aren’t nearly as memorable as McWilliams. The chili chocolates we pick up in Cessnock are quite a find, though!
• Cockle Bay is definitely a good spot for yuppie-style dining, what with its many options and shore view, and we find a nice Indian place. Good food, but we encounter annoying service once again; over the last 15 minutes we’re there (with nothing on the table), two different people come over to refill our water glasses but no one says boo to us. I really hate having to ask for the check, I don’t think I should have to.

• The morning starts smoothly, if a bit early, as we stroll down to Winyard station, get some coffee, and obtain our Blue Mountains Explorer rail/bus passes. Soon we hop a train and arrive at the Central station for a transfer…at which point I frantically realize I don’t know where to go. Earlier in the week I had been impressed with the nice CRT and LCD screens that CityRail has installed that show the wait time and upcoming stops for the next trains, but even if they were installed on this platform a big flaw is still that it doesn’t indicate where other trains are. After gleaning from the timetable that this certainly isn’t the platform where we need to be, I rush downstairs (annoying Liz with my incoherent mutterings and purposeful stride) to locate the proper platform and bolt in that direction; of course, upon getting to the platform I realize that we had twenty, not two, minutes before our train left so all my rushing was unnecessary.
• Wow, the Blue Mountains area is really impressive, too bad some of the views and colors are subdued by the persistent overcast. The setup of a dedicated hop-on, hop-off bus to get around is a really good one, but Liz discovers quickly that the top level of an old, rickety double-decker bus from England really isn’t the best place for someone prone to motion sickness. Fortunately, many of the stops are close together, so we spend more of the day walking among the trails than we do on the bus.
• On the way up I had been lamenting about the lack of a signiture architectural style in Sydney: across the city and suburbs, and continuing up into the mountains, there’s initially little to indicate Australia or New South Wales–we might just as well be in California. As the bus driver points out some of the nicer homes in Leura he indicates that the best of them are in the only major signature style of the area–Federation Bungalow–but that Australians for decades never bothered to maintain them. A pity, for they are nice looking, especially with their nice inviting verandas.
• Surprisingly, the train moves fairly slowly even out in the boonies. The trip from Katoombah/Leura to Winyard takes nearly two hours, yet the map shows we only went about 65km! An El train would have lapped us a couple times over, it seems.
• We locate the row of restaurants Liz misplaced the other night, and of course it was all of about a block from where she thought it should have been. The initial seating has a lovely view of the Bridge, Opera House, and Sydney Cove, but the hostess should have known better on a breezy, rainy night than to put us right at the edge of the umbrella-covered area, as we only end up having to move inward. Even though we shouldn’t be at this point, Liz and I are both mildly surprised when the waiter brings us a nice bottle of pinot noir from SA–and then unscrews it!

• Ah, the joys of finally sleeping in. Vacation is at its best when there are things to be done but no particular schedule or urgency.
• Liz wants to go up George St. to the weekly Rocks Market, and I actually enjoy it more than expected. It has its fair share of touristy, flea-market dreck, but there’s actually some good booths for Australiana–hand-made boomerangs, jewelry from opals, other native stuff. Gotta love Diary of a Wombat: “Morning: slept. Afternoon: slept. Evening: scratched; sometimes hard to reach the itchy bits.”
• A stroll through the Botanic Gardens provides some nice sightlines across the city and harbor, a chance to finally see with my own eyes what I’ve only seen in Liz’s pictures so far. Well-landscaped grounds such as these are a joy everywhere, but it’s fun to notice the subtle differences in flora that indicate we’re not in North America anymore; it’s not just palm trees, but the distinctive outlines of eucalypts and lots of flowers that seem strangely larger and more colored than what we’re used to.
• As we board the ferry for Watson’s Bay, I can’t really fathom that people use ferries as a reliable commute. Certainly they get where they need to be, but it seems that keeping them on proper schedules would be vastly harder than it is for buses and trains, what with weather and tides and all; yet, I suppose that’s only a problem for people beholden to the idea of ‘promptness’ as known to big-city Americans.
• Watson’s Bay is beautiful, with its shores and hills hosting fine houses and expensive cars. Like San Francisco, it’s a deceptively tiring place to walk, as stretches that seem to be short jaunts become lengthy ordeals with all the elevation changes.
• We stroll into the pub near the wharf just as the AFL Grand Final is ending, and the Sydney Swans win it for the first time in 72 years. A roar goes up from the patrons…and quickly fades away. Wow, not quite the same as if, say, a Chicago baseball team were to end its drought; guess Sydneysiders are just not as attached to their local sports teams as are most Americans.
• All that walking pushes us to stay close to the hotel for dinner. In it sounds even better, so we head down to Kabel’s. Ah, attentive service for the second night in a row!

• After gettinq up early to arrive in St. Leonards for the weekly call with Chicago, of course I get to the platform 30 seconds too late and have to wait 12 minutes for my train, watching 3 others go by towards other destinations. That’s a downside of strict schedules, but it will teach me to actually *read* schedules when I’m riding trains that aren’t the El.
• Hooray, vacation at last! The last few hours before a vacation are always interesting–that frantic mix of excitement and annoyance while trying to tie up those last few items and shove them off to be Someone Else’s Problem for a week–but there’s definitely an heightened sense of adventure when realizing that when I finally board the train with nothing but vacation time ahead of me, I’m doing it in a far-off foreign land.
• The evening is consumed with a nice dinner criuse around Sydney Harbour. Champagne, shiraz, and attentive service, huzzah! Pity that we couldn’t do this around sunset so we could see not only the dusk colors but also more of the shoreline, but the twinkly lights all around are quite nice too. This cruise really gives a feel for how exquisite is this harbor, as the many course corrections indicate how many coves and bays of all shapes and sizes are sculpted around the shoreline. Up on deck I finally get a chance to see the (apparent) strangeness of the southern sky–Sagitarius overhead, Scorpius diving towards the northwest upside-down, Vega dim and twinkly–but I’m disappointed that I can never quite pick out Crux through the city skyglow and thin clouds.

• Back to Starbucks this morning, where they understand that the proper response to “grande coffee of the day, please” is “do you want room in that?”
• I tried a pie for lunch, I’d say they’re a bit better than American pot pies and certainly easier to eat with one’s hand. Not very spicy for cajun chicken, however, and I found the signs exhorting ‘down south flavor’ quite amusing.
• After a long day, all I want is some pub grub and a beer or two. We find a good spot in the Rocks Cafe: pale ale, fried prawns, and a few bits of lettuce, tomato, and cucumber that they cutely call a salad. Signs indicate that we pay at the register on our way out, but aqain we must flag down a server after several minutes of empty table to find out that we need to tell our table number at the register. Now, this is actually a fine system, but it’s not necessarily obvious to visitors; as Liz points out this is a big destination for tourists, so wouldn’t it make sense for servers to volunteer that information to guests whose strong American accents might indicate unfamiliarity with local cafe customs?

• Shook things up this morning, forgoing Starbucks to stop at a Gloria Jean’s outside St. Leonard’s station. Regular coffee of the day, simple right? Ha! Nearly a minute of befuddled discussion ensued (too early for all these questions before coffee!) before the epiphany of “oh, you want flat black”, which wasn’t really true–I wanted coffee, not espresso & water–but was good enough. (Interestingly, Liz went through the same thing shortly thereafter over in The Rocks but had to hear “ah, wait, you’re American”.) C’mon, Oz, 21st century now: full brewed coffees of several kinds are allowed, and ‘flat black’ is not one–that’s a size & style.
• Here it’s not dim sum but yum chow, but it’s tasty just the same. We eat while eyed by tanks full of huge lobsters and crabs. Mmm, mango pancakes.
• My laptop still thinks it’s in Chicago, so the need to go across the ocean to the corporate internet proxy makes filling out a dinner-cruise reservation via the web a bit painful. Much better to connect from the hotel room and avoid the trans-Pacific latency.
• Liz somehow lost a row of restaurants she though were along Sydney cove, so we end up at a little Italian place off George St. The shiraz, barramondi, and pasta are straightforward and relaxing, but again I had to ask for the check despite two different waitresses noticing that we sat for 10 minutes after the table was cleared yet never stopping by; so far I’ve not been impressed with the service here.

• Go figure, the trains are vastly more crowded at 8:30am on a weekday than at 9:30am like yesterday. Makes it much harder to eat my muffin and enjoy the scenery.
• Uneventful day in St. Leonard’s, but that’s really a good thing considering that I don’t want to deal with too many surprises when coming on a 10,000 mile road trip. Didn’t hit a mental wall today, I think I’m all adjusted to the time change.
• After a drink in the hotel bar, we stroll a few blocks south to the Sydney Tower for dinner. Fantastic, fantastic views…but oh, the food was mediocre and the service was bad. Okay, we went to the buffet restaurant so I shouldn’t have expected much, but after the waitress took my credit card to open the bar tab I never saw her again. Not for refills, not to indicate where my plastic went, nothing. Flagged down a passing waiter eventually to get another drink near the end of dinner, but I had to figure out on my own that it was my responsibilty to go to the bar to settle up; that’s a fine system, but would it have been so outrageous for the staff to make that clear? All in all a tourist trap kind of experience–perhaps we should have forked over the extra money to go to the sit-down restaurant–but I suppose we paid primariliy for the vantage ponit.
• A nice after-dinner stroll through the eucalypts and fountains of Hyde Park make up for the dinner woes. Quite the nice little park.

• Slept through the night, no trouble getting up. Jet lag? Bah!
• Room doorbell (!) rings while I’m in the shower: Liz has called the front desk about an iron and they’ve already delivered! One glitch resolved!
• Two blocks down, the Westpac ATM happily takes my travelers-cheque card and emits several slips of the brightly colored plastic the Aussies call money. Other major glitch resolved!
• Uh, McCafe?!? Weren’t those a horrible failure back in the States? Hmm.
• Starbucks a couple blocks down from the ATM. Part of me thinks I should try something else, but at this point of the trip (and the morning) I should start with something known, hot, and caffeinated. Lo and behold, this one is at the entrance to Winyard station!
• Weekly CityRail pass, check. Rail system seems extensive and well-planned, seems like a cross between the El and Metra. However, these concepts of intercity trains and (especially) timetables seem quite foreign to me, as I’ve learned to ignore as laughable to ignore the ones posted on El platforms.
• After catching my first glimpse of the SOH, I frantically look around for the famous Harbour Bridge. Where is it?! Duh…I’m on it. Oh, well, at least this train line doesn’t use the tunnel so I’ll have decent views.
• 4:15pm…yawn, brain goes fuzz, mind hits a wall in the middle of a conversation. Guess I’ll have to cope with some jet lag after all. Fortunately, it passes after about 10-15 minutes.
• On the walk back from Winyard station, I begin to notice that all my road-crossing instincts are wrong for the traffic here, funny how 31 years of seeing traffic on the right side of roads will get in one’s head. Better be more careful over the next week.
• Finally get a nice view of the Bridge and SOH as we stroll over to Circular Quay for dinner. A nice dinner outside at a harborside cafe, one of several that seems smarter than many American places in that the heating elements here are integraged into overlapping umbrellas that completely protect the whole seating area; the prices seem a bit high until I realize that they are in Australian dollars and include tax already.

• Hmm, taking out the trash at 5am is really odd, proof that something is up. At least getting going this early makes the traffic to O’Hare a snap–especially since I’m not driving.
• My first impression of LAX is not a good one. Some delays in Chicago cut 45 minutes out of our original 2.5 hour layover time, which in general isn’t a problem since our bags are checked through to Sydney and both flights should be in the same terminal. However, I note with dismay that the Sydney flight isn’t listed on the CRTs in the terminal. After a few moments I notice a Qantas 747 parked at a nearby gate, but as there’s still no information anywhere I ask a ground agent doing some rope-line housekeeping at the apparent gate if that’s the plane, noting that there’s no information on any board. Her response? “Oh, that flight doesn’t leave for a couple of hours, so there’s no need to put the info up yet.” Such nonchalance about an international flight due to push off from the gate in 95 minutes?!? WTF!!!?! Ground transit to ORD can often be a beast, but at least you have no trouble finding gates and flight status once there, sheesh.
• Ooh, personal video screens for every seat, complete with video games, plus pillow, blanket, and toothbrush. Qantas knows how to treat its long-haul passengers well! Economy seats in a 747 aren’t big, but certainly better than trying to cross an ocean in a MD Super 80. Too bad the paeons in coach aren’t considered good enough for laptop power ports. Oh, well, Tetris (er, sorry, Volcanix> and Downfall it will be.
• Fourteen hours in the air goes by more quickly and less painfully than I would have expected, but nearly 24 consecutive hours of transit are brutal, only to be faced with the weirdness of left-lane driving, right-hand drive…and the shock of coming all this way only to find Starbucks, McDonald’s, and 7-Eleven on nearly every block.
• Hmm, first I can’t get money out of an ATM, then we find the room has no iron. Hopefully things will prove easier to resolve after a few hours of sleep (in a bed) and a shower…