Since my last post received a complaint about length, I’m going to try to make this one a bit longer. This past weekend Dickinson was nice enough to send us to Sydney. We flew out of Brisbane Friday morning, landing in Sydney around 10:30. Russ Alexander, one of Ann’s friends from Sydney who also runs abroad programs, picked us up from the airport and took us to the bus. The bus took us to our hotel for the weekend, which was probably the nicest place I will stay in Australia. It was a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment with full kitchen and living room on the 62^nd floor of the World Tower, and could be bought for about $1.5 million. It was nice. So we checked in, left our bags there, and then went to a park to have lunch. After lunch we walked a little bit of the cliffs of the shore, with Russ telling us about little bits of Sydney’s history along the way. After walking the cliffs, the bus took us back into the city where we continued walking (Ann calls the Sydney trip “fat camp” because we walk all the time) around the city, looking at historic buildings and museums. One place we went through was the botanical gardens. While there, Russ held out bread and got a Sulfur Crested Cockatoo to land on his arm. After that, if you just stood there holding out your hand like you had bread, another cockatoo would land on your arm, shoulder, or head. After the botanical gardens, we walked around the bay a little bit and down to the opera house. From there, we went back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.

We took the subway through the city to an area called The Rocks and went to a restaurant where you picked a cut of meat and grilled it yourself. It was pretty fun and interesting, and really good. After dinner we had a bar crawl, going to 5 different bars. We started in an old bar that had its own microbrewery, and ended up in a new more club like bar, with each bar having its own interesting atmosphere. One was a rooftop bar, really quiet with a good view, and another was in a crowded room with a live band made up of a guitarist and violinist. All in all it was a pretty fun night.

Saturday started earlier than some would have liked, and involved a lot more walking. We left the hotel around 9 and took a bus back to the cliffs, and walked the coastline again, this time seeing a lot of aboriginal rock carvings and different beaches, including the famous Bondi beach. After this walk, which ended around noon, we got on a bus to the Paddington St. market, where there were a lot of neat little things to buy, none of which I did. We had lunch there, and then walked back to the hotel, and we had free time for the afternoon, where I, and I’m pretty sure everyone else, napped. We had dinner that night in Darling Harbour, at a family style Malaysian restaurant. It was really good; we had a couple chicken dishes, a beef dish, and ice cream for dessert. After that we again had free time for the night, and I decided to spend it in the hotel hanging out with people, watching TV, and playing games.

Sunday was a completely free day, and Kyle and I decided to wake up and go to mass at St. Mary’s cathedral, because it was a beautiful church from the outside, and it was only a couple blocks from our hotel. Unfortunately, there was a mix up in mass times and we missed it. We still got to go inside and check it out, and it was amazing. After that, Kyle and I just wandered the city looking for breakfast, going by Lamborghini and Bentley dealerships on the way. After we got breakfast around 11, we went down to the Opera House, where Dickinson had bought us tickets to a tour. The tour was pretty good; we got to go inside three of the theatres, but a lot of the information was given by video, which was a little lame, but still interesting. After that was over, we had a few more hours of free time before we had to fly back to Brisbane. A bunch of us went to Paddy’s Market in Chinatown, different than the Paddington St. Market, where they had everything dirt cheap. They had “replica” MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and soccer jerseys for $5-$15. I only bought one, restraining myself greatly because I didn’t have a lot of cash on me, and needed to buy other things. After that, we flew safely back to Brisbane, and got ready for a regular school week. This Friday I leave to go to the Whitsunday Islands in North Queensland, in the Great Barrier Reef. I’ll again try to post after that, but I only have two weeks of class left and its starting to get a little busy, so we’ll have to wait and see about that.