Whoo!! Cabo!!

Greetings from sunny Sydney!

Okay, that's a bit of a stretch; it's past 5 PM so really more of a sunset purplish-grey, but it WAS sunny once upon a not-so-distant time. I'm writing this from the Sydney Central YHA (hostel, for those of you who don't speak backpacker), where you're about to get 75 whole cents of my time (75 cents being equivalent to 15 minutes internet-wise). In that time, I'll update you on days 1 through 3 of spring break. (Yes, it is spring here.)

Day 1: On Friday morning, I flew to Sydney after far too little sleep. Fortunately, my ride to the airport was with Arcadia friends Mitch and Mara, both of whom are morning people, so we were all quite talkative and energetic in spite of it being just after 5 AM. The flight was a bit late but generally smooth and I made it to Katie's dorm at UNSW (another Arcadia friend) by about 10. In the afternoon, Katie and I ventured into the city, where we wandered through the botanical gardens for a few hours. The gardens have a harborside path with wonderful views back at the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. We took lots of pictures of the scenery, as well as a few of our shadows dancing and such.

In the evening, we managed to stay up all the way until 9:45 (having both slept not-quite-enough the night before) then got lots of wonderful sleep.

Day 2: Yesterday (Saturday), I met up with Lauren, a camp friend whom I hadn't seen in 3 years, at Circular Quay (where the bridge and opera house are). We took a ferry to Manly, which is about 7 kilometres away. In Manly, we walked along the coast for awhile and looked in lots of the shops along the main street. We enjoyed some delicious ice cream from a shop called Copenhagen, where they'll dip the edge of your cone in chocolate just before filling it and they had free toppings such as nuts and sprinkles which you could add yourself. We also had dinner on the harbour where we could watch the sky change color as the sun set. We took the ferry back in the dark, so the Sydney skyline was all lit up and beautiful.

Upon our return to Sydney, we found a pub where we could watch sports. Lauren's local footy team (footy in Sydney referring to rugby league football, not aussie rules as in Melbourne) was playing Brisbane so I got to watch rugby league for the first time. (Rugby union is the international game, league is an Aussie game which is rather like touch rugby with tackling.) We left before the end so we could head to our respective homes for the night; for me, this entailed taking a bus out to Bondi Beach for my stay at the Bondi Beach YHA.

Day 3: This morning, I woke up at 5:50 AM for some inexplicable reason and decided to go down to the beach (about 10 minutes down the hill) to watch the early-morning surfers for a bit. After that chill time, I had a lovely breakfast of yogurt and muesli (Aussie version of granola) at a cafe across the street from the beach then headed back up to the hostel for a nap before check-out. After I checked out at 10, I walked back down to the beach to spend some time in the sun and enjoy the later-morning busy-ness of Bondi. There were hundreds of people all along the beach and the crowd of surfers 20 meters out had multiplied fivefold. In the afternoon, I took the bus back into the city (Bondi, the closest ocean/surfing beach to the city, is about 30 minutes outside of it) then went to a grocery store for food and made myself a delicious late lunch here at the hostel. While I was dining, there was an announcement over the intercom that there was a Brazilian festival today at Darling Harbour, so I wandered over to that after lunch, stopping by a giant market (Sydney's indoor version of Queen Vic) on the way. Tonight, I meet up with Katie for dinner before lots of rest for a trip up into the Blue Mountains tomorrow.

More later!