Friday, May 22nd, 2009, Sydney

Bob:

After breakfast we put in a quick morning walk back to that Australian memorabilia store where I bought a couple of wallets for my sons and Monika purchased a couple of decks of cards. To try to get the most out of our walk we intentionally tried to walk different routes than the previous day. Into the city, we walked down through the park that leads from the ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) Memorial near our hotel into the city center. Despite being the onset of winter locally, most of the trees were still quite green, at one point forming a huge arboreal arch over the promenade that was very pretty. We also enjoyed seeing the different birds and the large fountain with a lot of classical bronze sculpture at the North end of the park.

After our shopping, we worked our way back to the hotel through side streets. We walked past the "Marshmallow on a stick", the television tower that dominates the landscape of the Central Business District of Sydney. Most of downtown Sydney has streets laid out in the grid system that makes exploring alternate routes quite easy and fun. I kept seeing "Hungry Jack" restaurants in Sydney that had exactly the same decor and offerings as the American Burger King chain, so it seemed that McDonald's and Burger King are also duking it out in Australia.

Checking out of the hotel, we were picked up by Neville and Lynn, who then proceeded to take us on a driving tour around Sydney lasting several hours. Neville knew most of the Universities in the area and we drove around those to get a feel for them. Since Neville had attended a couple of different ones and even taught at one for quite a while, he was the perfect guide for that kind of a tour.

We rounded the tour off by driving up the peninsula on the easternmost side of Sydney and driving through the area where Neville had grown up and attended what we would call a private grammar school and high school. Very pretty area, but also very high-priced these days according to Neville. We stopped by Bondi beach, a beautiful long, crescent-shaped beach famous for its surfing. With the strong on-shore winds the storms had been kicking up, the surf was quite impressive and sure enough there were some surfers enjoying the wavy tumult down at one end of the beach.

We then stopped at a very nice bistro where we chatted quite a while as a tropical downpour hit while we were eating lunch, and then continued our driving tour out on the peninsula that constitutes the outermost entrance to Sydney Harbor. The sea in the "Gap" or narrows forming the actual entrance to the harbor was quite rough. Huge waves were furiously crashing against the rocky cliffs on the outer side of the harbor. It was fun to watch but we were quickly soaked with the sea spray.

Neville worked his way back through downtown Sydney to catch the bridge over the harbor to get to the ring of suburbs on the northern side of the harbor that included Hornsby, where their condo was located. Traffic was quite heavy and I was very surprised by the left-hand-side traffic patterns, possibly because I was sitting in what would be the driver's seat in the USA but had no steering wheel and absolutely no control over the vehicle, which was probably just as well! That evening we had a wonderful time discussing the things occurring in various parts of our respective families and watching Eroica, a movie that followed the life events of Beethoven during the initial playing of his third symphony. All the musicians used period instruments as well as using the original performance setting, I think, so it was quite an impressive period piece as well as being some wonderful music. Very relaxing before bed.