After a great sleep
(wearing earplugs), we had another nibbley breakfast in our rooms and decided
to walk to the Botanic Gardens. We
weren't sure how far away everything was, but it was a beautiful walk through
quiet neighbourhoods to get there. We
didn't spend too much time in the gardens, but we did get a stunning view of
the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from the top of a hill.
We kept walking
through the city to Darling Harbour where we had overpriced burgers for lunch,
and then made our way over to the aquarium.
I think we were all pretty excited for the aquarium, but I'm not sure it
lived up to our expectations. There were
some really cool small tanks (I especially liked the jelly fish), but the big
tanks with the sharks and stuff weren't as mysterious or well
"decorated" maybe as we were expecting. They were still really cool though, just not
as cool as aquariums always look in movies.
One thing I wasn't expecting was to get seasick from just LOOKING at the
ocean! Seriously, the fish tanks made me
nauseous. Or maybe it was the swarms of
kids everywhere…
Darling Harbour
seemed to be the hub of all of the excitement, so we stopped at another pub for
a drink and watched the boat racing.
Randomly the power
went out in the strip of buildings we were in, so the music stopped and we
headed on our way. I went to play in an
interesting fountain, my dad checked out some classic cars, and we sort of
watched a guy juggling fire (but he was boring).
To get back to
Circular Quay we walked the Esplanade, but that was a bit long and tiring so we
stopped for another quick drink before dinner.
Dinner was during
sunset, overlooking the Opera House, at ARIA.
It's co-owned by Matt Moran who is a famous Australian chef and guest
judge on the show MasterChef, and Peter Sullivan who also makes guest
appearances on the show. As most of you
know I absolutely love that show, so one of the things I really wanted to do in
Sydney was to go to a famous restaurant.
There are dozens to choose from, but this one was in the right location,
has 2 Chef's Hats, and was open on Sundays.
I was looking forward to this the most of everything, but I know
everyone had an unforgettable night. The
restaurant was beautiful, but not pretentious which was great. The menu was short, but we all wanted to eat
everything on it. For each course we all
ordered something different, so we got a really good sampling of everything
they had. And holy cow was it
amazing! We were all blown away, which
is great considering we're all very good cooks.
We really wanted excellent wine with the meal, and the sommelier was
really attentive and helpful with that.
We picked one bottle of bubbly, and then he surprised us with the
rest. He found a red wine that my mom
loved, and a beer that pleasantly surprised my dad - both high praise! After dessert they even brought us an extra
tasting plate of various desserts, which we managed to eat even though we were
beyond full.
Since my parents had
paid for the dinner cruise, it was our turn to pay for this meal. I loved that we could take them somewhere
that they would never go themselves, and honestly it was nice to take care of
the bill for once. Until my card got
declined. Imagine you're in a fancy
restaurant full of people, and the bank machine makes a horrible declined
noise. Not once, but 3 times in a
row. Most embarrassing thing ever! In Australia we get really high interest
rates on our savings accounts, so it's stupid to leave too much money in your
day-to-day account. I guess we just
didn't have enough in there for the trip!
We ended up using our Canadian credit card, but turns out we actually
would have had enough cash to pay for the meal if we had been thinking
straight. Oh well, you've just gotta
laugh at stuff like that!
We were all on such
a high from dinner that we weren't quite ready to go back to the hotel. My dad has kind of a hippy-sounding
philosophy to "follow the music", but really it's the perfect thing
to do on a night like that. Find a live
band, have a few drinks, and everything is right in the world. We did just that, and it quite possibly
overshadowed the rest of our trip. We
went to the Opera Bar which was outside on the Esplanade, and there was a band
called Uncle Jed playing awesome jazz covers of popular artists like Gnarls
Barkley and Jack Johnson. I could not
have written a more perfect end to the evening.
The harbour was lit by the Opera House, the Bridge, and a ginormous
cruise ship, which sounds bad but it was quite ambient.
Unfortunately the
band only played for another half an hour, but I bought a few of their CDs to
bring back the memory whenever I listen to them. Near the end of the evening the cruise ship
started to leave, which was quite a production in and of itself. I cannot overstate how huge it was, and it
had to do a multi-point turn to get out of the harbor, narrowly missing the
bridge and the shoreline. Everyone at
the bar was watching intently, and they all clapped when it left
successfully. I'm sure they do it all of
the time, but it was quite the accomplishment if you ask me.
And thus ended our
amazing trip to Sydney. It was great to
get to share the adventure with my parents, and the perfect way to visit Sydney
for the first time. I know there are lots
of things we didn't do, but Sydney is massive so you have to pick and
choose. I wouldn't change anything!
The next morning we
slowly got ready to leave, then flew back to Adelaide around 11am. My parents continued on to Hawaii, and Ryan
flew back to work the next day. It was a
wonderful whirlwind.
As a bonus, since I
took so long to blog about our trip to Sydney, here is the postcard we created
from the trip and a brief insight into Wasylyk humour. Enjoy!
