Sid knee

I’ve never travelled on my own overseas. I dont particularly like travellling on my own but this was only a short flight across the tasman ditch so thank goodness for that. My trip reminded me of a woman that djd and I had bumped into in Auckland one year when we were travelling to England. We had a stop over in LA and she was flying directly over to England and on to Rome….nup dont ever want to do that on my own…unless of course you happen to be travelling first class 🙂

Still I showed no fear as I walked through customs and got on the plane and got off the plane and through customs on the other side to wonder out into an airport I had never seen before to find a taxi to take me into Sydney city to my djd

I stepped out of the airport and march with false confidence to the taxi stand. It must get damn busy here as they have a queue control system that winds for some distance. Lucky for me there is nobody about and I get directed to a taxi. “Novotel Darling Harbour” and I am on my way.

 

Its probably been 20 years since I have been in Sydney and this is a city that has not stood still over time, motorway systems, tunnels, tolls have all sprung up to progress this city to be able to manage with the traffic flow it must face on a daily basis. I suspect that having the Olympic games there a few years back may explain some of these improvements to the city. The train system also seemed to be pretty good as well having read up about it on the web before I came over. I will get a very small taste of that the next day.

 

I arrive at the hotel and have been txting djd to say I was here, that I had seen pelicans and been in a tunnel and now at the hotel where was he ?!?!?!? I get my card and make my way up to the room and as I step out my elevator just ahead of me is a fine looking gentleman who has just gotten out of another elevator….it is my darling 🙂

 

He was just so glad to see………………my laptop…………….so he could download all his pics from the last few days to free up more room for that night as we decided to go and take pictures of the Sydney opera house. I love it when I am so wanted *grin*

 

So we head out the door camera and tripod in hand and jump in a taxi “Take us to the rocks” and off we go. A quick trip and I thought rather a cheap price as well for taxi’s.

 

There it is, sitting in all its glory looking all lite up and picture inviting. We did the snapping of camera’s djd used a tripod to get better stability as he took his pic with lots of aperture (is that the right way to think of it!??!?) Any way I just stood pointed and shot.

 

Then there was the bridge on the left of us and some nice old building around us and a row of restaurants all very inviting and the smell of seafood was drifting through my nostrils.

Harbour bridge piccie courtesy of djd as mine was far to blurry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner was next on the agenda, even if my body was saying….its 10pm you know…..not a time to be eating…..of course its only 8pm local time and djd was hungry.

 

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Cant remember the name of the restaurant we went to but we decided to have the seafood dish for two and it was one of the best plates of food that we have ever had, it even beats the Vanuatu one we had with the mud crab.  Its was so delicious I would have easily gone back the next night and had it again if we hadn’t been heading out to the Blue Mountains for the weekend.

 

We even had a “bug” as one of he items and although it was an interesting creature it didn’t really have a strong flavour not like the lobster that they served up which I have to say must have been a local crustacean and although in NZ we  have eaten some rather large lobsters and juicy lobsters this one was really really tasty. Have I made you hungry yet 🙂 I wish we had thought about getting a picture instead of eagerly feeding our faces!!

 

The next day djd had some more lectures to attend to until about 12 noon when he would be finished and we could go pick up a car and head out of the city. So I had a morning to myself to wander and go for little trips on the mono rail that has a circular circuit around all of darling harbour with several stops to get off and on to see the sights of Sydney.

 

First though djd took me to see the Ibis. I suspect that most cities all over the world have a local bird that is like the local pest mostly either pigeons or seagulls. Every city councils nightmare as they struggle with the fact that the bird is a pest but they cant be seen to be taking care of the problem in front of the public. However just imagine a bird the size of the Ibis being your inner city bird problem. They are not little birds!! Absolutely fascinating to sit and watch though….just could not get over the size and antics of these birds. I hope in some ways that they aren’t being culled to none existence but I think they had better control them somehow cause if one of those birds decided to leave their calling card on you as you strolled around the harbour you could get rather messy. Still they seemed to have them pretty localized to just the one area around the harbour.

 

Water feature at Darling Harbour outside the event centre where djd was being bored.

Ibis

 

Great looking sculpture in same area

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I said a farewell djd and wondered back to the hotel to charge up his camera and take me and mine on a mono train ride for the morning. I would really recommend this trip to people who visit Sydney, there are several stops all designed to take the tourist to an attraction. There was Paddy’s market which is like a huge cheap shopping mall made up a of little market shops. There was the Sky tower where you get a 360 degree look of Sydney, there as the stop to go to the bird park and animal park. There were stops to take you to Malls and stops to take you into a city shopping area and stops to take you to restaurants and a chance to walk across a bridge. I had a great time and did the Paddy’s market and the sky tower and took the circuit trip about 3 times. Great fun but would have been really great if djd had been with me.

Mono Rail

 

Looking back at the Novotel and the Event centre across Darling Harbour

Views from the Sky Tower, pictures a little bit cloudy due to be taken through glass…and thank goodness the glass was there!

Finally djd is finished we jump into a taxi and make our way to Avis to pick up our car. The poor taxi man though hadn’t heard of Avis being at the address I gave him, but I had only that morning spoken to them and gotten the address from them so he took us there even though he knew them as another address. After we had been in the taxi for about 20 minutes and not appearing to be getting anywhere fast but traveling a huge distance I was beginning to wonder if we had a dodgy taxi man. We get to the address and it turns out it’s a really really long street but its one way and he had to go the whole distance down a parallel street to be able to get to the beginning as the address was no 36 and the avis office was attached to a hotel and that why he had not heard of it before it was really good luck rather than good management that we found it in the end.

 

Finally in the car having had to swap the first one cause the boot wouldn’t open and we are on our way, both of us rather tense and nervous about trying to get out of the city from the very middle of one of the busiest cities in the world!!