Vegemite - A Short Story in Photos

Alex has been wanting to try Vegemite...

It didn't smell good...

But he persisted...

And this was the result...  ENJOY!

Anzac Day

Anzac Day is the Australian equivalent of Veteran’s Day and was celebrated last Wednesday (in my opinion, with much more respect & observance than we do in the US).  In addition to honoring their veterans, it’s the only day of the year Australians can play 2Up, a game I’ll talk about in detail later.  We were invited by a friend from college’s little brother to join him and his friends in Manly for the celebration and we were treated to the authentic experience – a fun afternoon of drunken gambling.

In order to catch the ferry to Manly, we had to cut through downtown which was alive with activity – a ceremony at the Anzac Memorial, a massive parade with veterans of all ages proudly wearing their military medals, marching bands (many with boys in full Scottish attire, kilts and all), and proud citizens out to celebrate those who served their country.  It was heart-warming at every turn, though we were on a mission to catch the ferry so we didn’t stick around to witness much of it. 

Once in Manly, we met up with Andy and his mates at the Wharf Bar and got our first few drinks under our belts.  From there we headed to Diggers, a private club with amazing views of Manly and a jam-packed yard full of twenty and thirty-somethings playing 2Up.  All that’s needed to play 2Up are a wooden paddle with three spots carved out to fit three coins, the coins, a big circle and someone to bet against.  It’s about as simple a game as there ever was – someone tosses the coins in the air, you bet heads or tails, and whatever side two of the three coins lands on wins.  How could this be fun, you’re probably wondering (don’t worry, I thought the same thing) but was it ever! 

There were multiple games going on around the grounds and each one had a huge crowd of people standing around screaming ‘5 on heads, 5 on heads’ or ’20 on tails, 20 on tails’ with the corresponding hand gesture (making a tipping your hat motion for heads or waving your hands in the air for tails) and money up until the throw.  In order to bet, all you had to do was find someone who would take the opposite side of your bet and hand over the cash to whoever bet heads (Alex pointed out immediately that at home, as soon as you gave a stranger $20, you’d never see him again [and consequently he never bet on tails!], but that wasn’t the case here).  The coins are thrown, the judge yells heads or tails depending on who won (obviously), the crowd cheers, the winner keeps the money and then the mayhem starts all over again.  You still may be wondering how this was fun, but take my word for it, it was - we stayed there drinking lukewarm, overpriced beer from a can and playing 2Up all afternoon until I was sufficiently wasted and Alex had lost all his money (damn heads).  Not a bad way to spend a Wednesday and another cool Australian experience for the books…

Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb

By far my new most favorite Australia experience is the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb & it’s going to be hard to top.  The Bridge Climb is a popular tourist attraction & was highly recommended by everyone we spoke with about our trip.  It’s exactly as it sounds – you climb to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge – and it is awesome! 

Alex & I decided to go on Friday b/c we finally had some good weather and we went on the Twilight Climb, where you go up in daylight while the sun is setting but it’s dark when you come back down so you can see all the city lights.  The trek took just over three hours in total (including gearing up and a brief training session) with most of the time spent on the arc of the bridge.  It seems like it would be scary b/c you’re up so high but it’s really not.  The bridge is very wide, the walkway has handrails on both sides and you’re hooked into safety gear so you feel like you’re just walking up some steps; no big deal.  Even as you look down at the Opera House and city looking small, it still doesn’t hit you that you’re 450 ft. above the water (this is coming from someone who’s terrified of heights too).

We had a fabulous climb leader, Nick, who kept it light but informative while we were climbing.  Apparently, when the bridge was built in the 20s & 30s, there were no steps or safety gear for the men building the bridge – they were just up there at their own risk.  Even so, over the course of building the bridge, something like eight years, only sixteen people died.  There were eleven of us in our group and we started out beneath the bridge on a gangway up to the pylons at the edge of the water then climbed up four sets of steep ladder-like stairs through the bridge (right next to the traffic & trains) until we were on the top section of the arc nearest the Opera House (to give a clearer idea - we climbed up to where you see the flags atop the bridge in the stock header photo for my blog).  From there we took the stairs up to the peak where we paused for a photo op and to check out the sunset, which was stunning.  Then we crossed the bridge and walked down the other arc, back down the ladders and across the gangway back to where we started.  It’s one big efficient loop, which is key seeing as tours run every ten minutes from 6am to after sunset. 

The views from the climb were amazing but unfortunately no cameras are allowed on the climb (because they pose a risk of being dropped onto the eight lanes of traffic below).  You could see all the way to coastal beach towns on the outskirts of Sydney (we realized how ridiculously far we walked when we went to Bondi Beach), the gorgeous harbor with all its inlets and bays as well as the city in all its glory.  The difference from daylight to nighttime viewing was incredible too.  Buildings lit up and we noticed architectural details we’d missed on our way up plus it highlighted how urban the climb was, even though you felt worlds away from the hustle and bustle of the city.  I could continue gushing about it but I really can’t put the experience into words.  So, if you’re ever in Sydney, this is a must do! 

Observations from Our First Week (Updated with Some New Insights)

Attire here is ‘different’.  That funky, late teens early 20’s Urban Outfitters-esque style is all the rage and it’s everywhere, even mature people working in the CBD are dressed this way.  At first I thought it was just a few people with questionable style but alas it was not.  Another puzzling trend here is the wearing of boots with shorts or skirts.  If that’s what it’s going to take to fit in, count me out.  Similarly, Alex isn’t feeling men’s attire either.  He thought the jeans he bought in Chicago were tight but they’ve got nothing on the skin-tight jeans the men of Sydney are wearing.  Their jeans are as tight as the skinniest jeans you’d see on a woman in the States.  And men rolling up their tight pants here is a trend as well.  I’d call it ‘Boys Town’ goes mainstream and don’t think it’d catch on at home.  The other interesting menwear trend is men of all ages dressed like surfer dudes.  I haven't seen this many people wearing Vans since eighth grade.  One 'interesting' haircut that we've been noticing frequently is the shaved undercut (the hair is long on the top but shaved up to the ear but only on one side)... on women!  I don't think I could ever be so brave but the women of Australia have no qualms about it.

Sydney isn’t what we expected (we were told it’s the NYC of Australia).  In fact, we’ve compared it to a number of different cities, for different reasons, but NYC has not yet been one of them.  It’s quite hilly like San Francisco (our place is at the top of a hill so we can’t go anywhere without having to struggle up a huge hill to get back home).  The style of homes in the area we’re in reminds us of New Orleans architecture with all the balconies on the entire front of the second story.  We likened it to Boston when we were in The Rocks because of all the brick streets, old buildings and no straight road to be found.  The people have all been very nice and super chill so it got a Chicago comparison for that and all the beautiful green space.  Lastly, the palm trees everywhere made Alex think of his days in southern Florida. 

The people are less attractive than you’d anticipate.  In ads & movies, Aussies are hot, blonde Adonis-esque men and supermodel-looking women but in reality, they have just as many average and/or unattractive folks as we do back home.

But they sure are fit.  People here exercise… a lot!  Runners are everywhere all day, every day.  You see them in the parks, on the streets, in the central business district at lunch – it’s impressive (and inspiring, we’ve been running a lot since we got here too).

Pregnancy is everywhere :/  What’s the only thing we’ve seen more than runners?  Extremely pregnant women.  Like every other lady we’ve seen so far is preggo.  It’s scary and has turned me off from drinking the water.

Women might be having babies, but the men appear to be doing all the work.  Dads on Daddy Duty is the norm, not the exception (maybe that’s why the women don’t mind getting pregnant).  We’ve seen Dad’s with their kids at the beach, at the store, in the park – its awesome! 

Another thing it appears women are not doing, working as executives.  We’ve been in the CBD everyday for at least an hour and we’ve seen countless men in suits on every corner but no women dressed as power players.  It’s weird, I wanted to ask, where are all the ladies in suits hiding?!   (I have been assured by a friend that there are in fact, a good number of women business professionals - thought I still haven't seen many).

Final thought; Alex has decided I am part Asian.  Every tourist spot we’ve hit has been filled with Asians taking a ridiculous number of photos of everything, including the most mundane things (like common fish at the Aquarium).  Well, I too want to capture the memories from our trip so I’ve been a bit camera-happy (though I don’t think I’ve been thaaaat bad) resulting in endless mocking from Alex.  He gave me the Asian nickname ‘Ding Dong’ so we’ll see if he gets a copy of any of these pictures when we get back…   

Fast facts that we found interesting and worth sharing:  Australian money is plastic (and therefore, impossible to tear), $5 is the smallest bill, $1 & $2 are gold coins, the $$ coins are smaller than their 5, 10, 20 or 50 cent silver coins (which confuses me every time), the crosswalkshere  all beep indicating whether or not you can cross (when its time to cross it sounds like a laser gun from Star Wars followed by a bunch of quick beeps), kebabs are wraps (not skewered meat - I found this out the hard way), every electronic outlet has an on-off switch and toilets have two flush options (depending on how much water you need to flush whatever you just did down).

Aren't We Cultured

Wednesday we took a tour of the Sydney Opera House and it was even more awesome than either of us expected (and we had pretty high expectations of this one).  There were architectural details everywhere you looked and no small detail was overlooked – the architect even made the bathrooms pretty spectacular.  My favorite parts­­ were the hallways to/from the various concert halls.  They had gorgeous views that showcased the exterior roofs as well as the unique internal support structure.  (I took a ton of photos so you can check out exactly what I’m talking about)  The whole building was designed to hide any drainage or wiring so it’s impeccable at any angle (unfortunately, they are currently doing construction on it so I had to frame my shots around the areas of scaffolding).  The concert halls were visually just ok, in my opinion (no photos allowed), but they were designed with sound in mind and apparently, from that perspective, they were amazing and well ahead of their time.  In addition to the main concert halls (that you envision for operas or the symphony), they have five smaller stages that are pretty cool and they are constantly putting on other productions at the Opera House (more than 2,000 each year).

After our tour, we had lunch and bought tickets to see the play MacBeth.  We’d decided during our tour that we’d be silly not to see a show at the Opera House while we were here and, since it was pouring down rain, it was an opportune way to spend the afternoon.  The play was good, but I don’t think either one of us was crazy it.  I don’t recall ever having been to a play before and, let’s not kid ourselves; Alex & I aren’t exactly ‘afternoon at the Opera’ kind of people.  But nevertheless we continued on with our day of cultured activities and cut through the Royal Botanic Garden on our way to the NSW (New South Wales, the Australian “state” that Sydney is located in) Art Museum for Art After Dark – a free weekly event on Wednesday nights. 

Much like the play, the art was also kind of lost on us.  Alex liked pointing out that boobs fell out of all clothing in the olden days and I enjoyed the aboriginal art.  We spent a few hours there (avoiding the continued deluge going on outside) and it was a nice way to round out the day. 

Yesterday the weather improved a bit and we got a few hours of sun before the rains began again.  We decided to go back to the Royal Botanic Garden and explore it more fully than we had the day before.  It was actually very cool and massive, right within the city.  It butts up next to the Opera House and runs all around the bay and back towards the city.  It’s very neat how the trees and greenery are juxtaposed against the high-rises in the background.  The garden had lots of fun areas – an English rose garden, oriental garden, rainforest, huge cactus farm & more – and interesting artwork and statues everywhere but the “wildlife” captured my attention the most. 

The night before when we were walking to the Art Museum we noticed bats (Alex was fascinated, I was grossed out).  In the daytime, you could see them hanging everywhere (check out the pic with the tree that looks like it has a lot of fruit on it, nope, those are BATS) and they are huge!  They are called flying foxes and, while they’re great for spreading pollination throughout the park, they’re apparently killing the trees and the garden is trying to get rid of them.  As if the bats weren’t creepy enough, there were some pretty large spiders living in the park too.  No joke, these suckers were probably six inches across if you included their legs.  More than just their size, they were those horror movie spiders that are just scary looking regardless of how big they are (you know the ones I’m talking about with the long legs and a big sac on their back – photo below for those of you who think I might have been exaggerating…).  And they’re actually everywhere here (we saw a bunch on our walk home from Bondi Beach last weekend).  Fortunately the lady at Wildlife World let us know that web-spinning spiders aren’t the ones that could kills us (b/c they use webs to snare their prey, not venomous bites) but still, walking under their massive webs in the park creeped me out. 

The park had amazing views of the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge from across the bay so we got some more cool photos of that (sorry, there are lots of photos of the Opera House).  After a picnic lunch in the park, we headed back to the city for a few more errands.  Thankfully we were finally able to locate a step-down transformer so our devices would work here – no one told us that an adapter would only work if we had the same voltage as here, which the US does not, so our adapters just worked for things like our computers, which already have a voltage converter built into their chargers.  For things like hairdryers and electric razors, we were SOL until we got this transformer (which was harder than expected to find).  Then we hit a café on the park for a glass of wine before heading back home.  The life of leisure that we’re leading has been pretty hard work so far ;) 

What a Way to Get Started

We are making the most of our short time here and started exploring Sydney right away.  Friday, after getting settled in our place, we went for a walk to nearby Kings Cross – a popular nightlife/backpacking area in Sydney.  It’s pretty cool with lots of bars, shops and young people but is also the Red Light District so it was odd to see so many sketchy-looking gentlemen’s clubs mixed right in on the main drag. 

Saturday we were up bright and early (b/c we fell asleep around 7pm the night before) and headed into the city to hit the bank (which wasn’t open) and the Sydney Visitor’s Center.  On the way, we cut through Hyde Park, which is a large park in Sydney’s CBD (Central Business District) with interesting art/architecture and huge, beautiful trees.  We saw the Anzac Memorial (their Veteran’s Memorial equivalent), several neat statues and a very cool fountain (all of which I’ve posted pictures of in my slideshow on the blog).  There was a triathalon going on with the finish line right in the park so there were tons of people around and lots going on.  We stopped by St. Mary’s Cathedral, a stunning building located right off the park.  The Church was huge, taking up the better part of a block, with all kinds of alcoves and interesting details everywhere, from the ceiling beams and the stained glass windows to the tile work on the floor and the exterior porticos.  Then we continued on our way to the Visitors’ Center, which we didn’t realize was located in Darling Harbor.  The Harbor turned out to be a great place to spend the day as it had TONS to do.  There was another smaller park, a Chinese friendship garden, kids’ play area, shops, places to eat, the Sydney Aquarium and Sydney Wildlife Adventure Park.  After hitting the Visitors’ Center for maps and tips on things to do, we explored the park then went to the Aquarium.  By far the coolest part was the shark exhibit!  They were up close and personal and super scary (even though they were harmless Nurse Sharks).  We spent a few hours there then enjoyed a very late lunch on the water before heading back for the day.  Not too bad for our first full day in Sydney!

Sunday we decided to walk to Bondi Beach (the most famous of Sydney’s many beaches).  We moseyed that way, enjoying all the sites we encountered on the way and making time to stop to purchase a a much needed cell phone.  It took a few hours so it was already noon by the time we got to the beach, which was perfect as we’d packed a picnic lunch.  The beach was busy but is huge so it didn’t feel too crowded and there were tons of surfers in the water along with kids and adults alike frolicking in the surf.  After we ate, Alex & I went down to play in the water but that was short-lived once we dipped our toes in and realized it was FREEZING cold.  Not sure how all these other folks were in up to their waists or out on boards like it was nothing because there was NO WAY either of us was going in that water.  So we sat on the beach playing cards and people-watching for a few hours before taking the Coastal Beach walk to Bronte Beach.  The Coastal walk was awesome and took us over the cliffs along the water and through one other beach on our way to Bronte.  After checking out Bronte briefly we began the long, uphill trek home.  By the time we got halfway back, my feet and muscles were starting to hurt so we caught a cab the rest of the way.  We checked it out online when we got home and realized we’d walked nearly 10 miles!  Needless to say, we didn’t get up to much after that…

Yesterday we spent the morning taking care of a few important errands (such as getting bank accounts) then went to Sydney Wildlife World.  We’d bought a package of tickets at the Aquarium which included Wildlife World and we had pretty low expectations but it ended up being one of the coolest places we’ve been so far.  There were all kinds of critters and most of them you could enter their enclosures with them.  We got to see Koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, cassowary, a huge crocodile & many other indigenous animals.  The koalas were my favorite, they were cute and sweet-looking and mere feet away with no fence or glass wall in between us and them.  Plus we got to see them at feeding time so they were awake and active (which they aren’t most of the day).  As much as I cringed while we were in it, the spider exhibit was really interesting and the lady stationed there provided a lot of useful information on what species to avoid while we’re here.  The crocodile was pretty cool too – it was amazing and intimidating to see how large they are in person (and this guy wasn’t even fully grown).  Let’s hope we don’t encounter any of those in the wild!  After that we headed back to Kings Cross and enjoyed a few well-deserved happy hour cocktails before calling it a day. 

This morning we’ve already taken a short run in a torrential downpour (seriously, monsoon-esque) and are just deciding what to do today.  It’s calling for rain the rest of the time we’re here (2.5 more weeks) so hopefully the weathermen here are as inaccurate as they are at home or we’re in for a wet few weeks…  Either way, we’re going to get out and continue enjoying Sydney and I’ll keep you all posted with what we’re up to. 

G'Day from Sydney

We're safely settled in our first place in Sydney and it's quite awesome!  The place is cute and quaint but the location is the best part.  We're within walking distance to everything in the city and there are all kinds of great local amenities within a block - a nice coffee shop, several funky bars and two convenience stores.  Plus we have this terrific view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from our rooftop.

 

If it went smoothly it wouldn’t be my life… (Rebecca, you’re going to love this!)

We made it safely to Sydney today but the journey wasn’t without some excitement .  Alex lost his passport a few hours before we were supposed to board the plane for the first leg of our flight.  Nope, not kidding, he lost his passport!  We were headed to the airport when we pulled over to grab a last minute meal when he casually was like, ‘I should find my passport’ only to discover that he didn’t have it.  It was an ‘OMG this is not really happening’ moment that I will never forget! 

We had a 20 hour layover in Toronto before heading on to Sydney (which we originally considered a nightmare but ended up being a blessing in disguise) so we went to the airport and rebooked ourselves for flights leaving the next afternoon (with time to catch our original connection) then headed back to Miami to a hotel near the British Consulate so we could be there first thing on Wednesday, which was amazingly (and thankfully) the only day of the week they take walk-ins without an appointment.  We were there when they opened at 9am and everyone was incredibly helpful and efficient in issuing him an emergency passport.  The drama doesn’t end there though because our visas are tied to our passport number and it is clearly stated that if you get a new passport, your visa is invalid and won’t work. 

We maintained our optimism despite the situation and headed back to the airport.  At the Air Canada desk, they were only able to print Alex’s ticket to Toronto because Australia requires proof of entry before you can get on any flights and Alex no longer had a visa tied to his new passport…  We sent an email to the Australian visa office but it was 3am in Sydney so there was nothing we could do but sit on the flight to Toronto and wait, hoping we’d be able to get everything worked out in time to get on the Sydney flight at 8:25pm.  At the Toronto airport, we encountered the same problems as in Miami, no record of Alex’s new passport number being granted a visa to enter Australia so they couldn’t put him on a flight.  By some miracle, the Visa office updated his records, based on the earlier email we’d sent, while we were speaking with the ticketing agent and his ticket was finally able to be processed.  So, with just over an hour to spare, everything had worked out. 

All that and we ended up still making our original flight!  Seriously?!  It was one hell of a way to begin our trip but it’s behind us now and WE’RE HERE!!  It cost Alex a few drinks, a little pride and we’ve both agreed, I’m in charge of the passports from now on ;)