So...Sydney. Day 1

After a fairly uneventful week – Atonement at the pictures (the best film I’ve seen while I’ve been here – I like a film that makes you think), some ridiculously busy days (and obnoxious patients. Nice to meet you, too.) I thought I’d better go and have a look at somewhere else. Particularly as I’m already about half-way through my time here.

So I flew out on Friday, got to Sydney after dark in the evening with a well-hidden guidebook somewhere in my bag. Thought I’d get the train into town. Already at the airport, the atmosphere was different. Easier. A stewardess was calling out to one of her colleagues to tell him to check out a comb-over, and a family were yelling on their 4yr olds as they had races up and down the travelator.

The train was dirty, but there were lots of them and regular. I was told Circular Quay, so I got off there thinking, maybe I’d get a taxi. Glad I decided to walk – as I fond out the next morning, you can see the hotel from the station. And over there, that’s got to be Sydney Harbour Bridge (complete with the New Year timer on it), and that over there must be the Opera House. You could see the bridge from the doorway of the hotel.

The hotel was one of the cutest I’ve stayed in. Over 150 yrs old, it was originally the first hospital – and still has much of the wood panelling and features. Like others I’ve stayed in, it wasn’t perfect, but it was clean and more than made up in character. I guess that means I’d recommend it.

Next day I managed to wake at 8:30, which wasn’t too bad and I was out before 10. Thought I’d get the train first - Darling Harbour. It was just like certain recently revamped parts of Birmingham. Anyway the walk there went past one of the cathedrals, the Town Hall and the Queen Victoria Building (QVB). That last is a huge shopping arcade built in the 1800s, with mosaic floors, a Christmas tree with 13000 Swarovski crystals (apparently – there were definitely a lot, and it was a large tree), and a marble-slab basin in the loos. It is named after the statue of Queen Vic given by the Irish, who were obviously having a bit of a clear-out and managed to flog-off, I mean donate, a piece of the Blarney Stone and several other ornaments. The shops were fairly up market, one clothes shop had some lovely linen dresses in. Sadly, Australian women just aren’t the right shape and obviously don’t have enough up-top. So I saved some money which is no bad thing (I had gone with the intention of perhaps finding some interesting shopping). There were also some of the most grotesque clocks you can imagine, hanging from the ceiling (without trying to insult the craft of the clock-makers).

Darling Harbour is a big plaza around the water, full of skateboarders and families with prams. And McDs (how many McDs can a city have??) Anyway, I did find the Maritime museum, cunningly at the same time as the rain started (for the fourth time that morning – I was beginning to think it didn’t over here). The Museum is actually fairly interesting, a section on shipwrecks (most of which occurred off the SA coast), a travelling exhibition about Oetzi the bloke found in the Italian ice (obviously without Oetzi, but with an exhibitionist who was entertaining lots of children with his stories and European accent).

There is a tiny corner which is a Chinese Garden. Which would be tranquil but for being crowded and full of people. But it’s pretty and worth the $6 or so.

Sydney, like most places, is much more interesting where it is grubby. The Spanish corner is literally a corner with a couple of shops and clubs under the monorail. But China town is bigger. While the market was just full of absolute rubbish – T-shirts, Chinese massages and rip-off shades, there were several shopping arcades that were just like Singapore. Including a very strange one that just seemed to have dozens of pick-a-cuddly-toy-up stalls and sticker machines all in fluorescent colours and Japanese (I think). Opposite a tree stump partly painted in gold (who knows why?) a man sat on a stool playing Inspector Gadget on beer bottles.

Having been in the museum, it was getting late and I forewent the Dim Sum I’d been promising myself. It was OK, I’d bought some licorice toffee, anyway. Through Hyde Park (about a twentieth the size of the London one), and the Anzac War Memorial which is huge in a between-the-wars sort of way, and has a sculpture of a dying soldier held up by a load a women in a tall room with a dome full of stars.

Then on to the Museum of Aus. There’s a lot to see in Sydney. Three days is not enough. There got to be one of the most bizarre rooms I’ve seen in a museum- it’s a load of skeletons, which I think is just an excuse to have a skeletal man riding a skeletal horse (and another one reading a paper in an armchair). Upstairs lots of minerals and then some stuffed insects / birds and the Aboriginal / Reconciliation artefacts which seem to be a must in all museums. I now know that it’s a Wolf Spider in my kitchen. Previously he was just huge, but now he has a name. To be fair, the dinosaur gallery was closed down and that seemed to be a large part of the museum.

Getting hungry now, but so little time. My meandering took me past the AMP tower / Centrepoint – call it what you will, but the tallest point in the city. Sadly before going up to the several metre high lookout, you had to sit and be patronised by a “holographic” show which told you amazing things such as that the outback is hot by day (try SA!) and cold at night. Then to be thrown around in a magic carpet ride that gratuitously pretended to be a rollercoaster without a point. It just made you feel sick, quite frankly (a point agreed with by one of the cashiers I got talking too – she had the grace to be embarrassed by the “Oz Trek” experience). Eventually we were allowed at the elevators up to the lookout. Which was worth it, and while up there they appealed for more people for the “Sky Walk” as there was only one person booked in on that session. So for an extra $40 I got to walk outside on top of the tower. Better than the $200+ for the bridge climb. And despite the promise held in the grey clouds almost below us, the rain held off. By the time I’d decided that I probably ought to fork out for the photos (else you’ll just think I’ve been making this up from the guidebook), the shops were closed and I walked back to the Rocks were the hotel is.

I dived into the first café that seemed to have seats, I was so hungry. Boy was that a mistake. The promise held outside by a very old-fashioned frontage and good sounding menu... The beer came quickly, and the chicken burger came very shortly afterwards. Completely average pub food, such as you find in a Brewsters. When the woman at the table next to me started complaining, it turned out she’d ordered the same as me and I’d got her order., She’d have been welcome to it, and despite such an obvious ice-breaker, she didn’t really say much. Never mind. I paid up and left.

Anyway, it turned out to be the first night of the festival so after getting changed, I headed out into the rain. The centrepiece of the first night was 3 marriage ceremonies. I missed the first, the second was a rededication ceremony between a guy who rode up on a bicycle with a rose between his teeth and a cabaret artist who jumped out of a cake and addressed the crowd as her people. The celebrant droned on, so I left to find a big band playing in Hyde Park, and a party-like crowd in Martin Place where the buildings were reverberating with the beat and inflatables were chucking out white confetti that blocked the fountains so the street became a puddle. The third couple to get married were a gay couple who danced down the street dressed as Chinese dragons. So a spectacle. The Centrepoint tower was lost in the mist.

After the weddings, two folk groups played. The first were an Irish trio, the second a Scottish group called Shooglenifty, who were the usual eclectic mix that Scottish bands can be. Rumba for Bazouki, Ukelele and Fiddle, with a fiddle player who looked just like a fiddle player should – wild hair, grey beard etc. Both groups had a guest musician who played the Dig. And then the fireworks, orange as all the banners were. It worked.

And my feet hurt.