Day 70-72: Extended, Family (or
the Marginal Information Mined from Two Quieter Days in Sydney)
The last two days were spent mostly with members of my
extended family that reside in Sydney. In lieu of boring you with Menezes and Pinto
family stories, I quickly saunter through the non-family-related events of the past
two days:
= Sydney is quite a nice city to just walk around in, which is
what I did after I awoke around noon on Saturday. It is a very urban city with
large buildings and broad streets, but tucked away are little parks, churches and
reminders of a Sydney left behind years and years ago.
= Sydney also has some nice bars and pubs littered throughout
the city. The only one I went to during my walk through Sydney was the Three
Wise Monkeys, an Irish style pub located on some street near the central part
of the Sydney CBD. They had a large selection of beers on tap, which seems to
be pretty standard in Sydney, or Australia in general.
= Sydney’s main CBD is its heart and soul, but the outer areas
of Sydney are large enough and busy enough that I still felt I was in a large
city. I had a dinner in the Northern part of Sydney (across the Harbor Bridge),
and the area outside the St. Leonard’s Street metro station was basically what
Hoboken is to NYC, which is not a bad thing.
= The beaches around Sydney may take some time to get to
during rush hour, but they are worth it. I went to Bondi beach on my way to the
airport on Monday, and while it was off season, and a little overcast, the
beach still looked about as perfect as any beach could. Sydney’s scenery in the
outer areas are quite stunning. Those cities also reminded me of coastal
Californian cities, with their open air bistros lining the street above the
pristine sand and gorgeous blue waves.
= Balmain has a lot of pubs. A lot. There are about 70 pubs in
that one district. Somehow, they all do pretty well, and while I went to a few
on a Sunday night, there was a decent crowd around. There are pubs for everyone
in this area. Some with music, some with grand architecture, some with outdoor
patios, some with views of the East Harbor.
= I don’t know why Melbourne’s Avalon airport exists. It is
some barren airfield located 50 km away from the city, that basically services
about six flights a day (which puts it level with Dalat’s airport). Only Jetstar
currently uses it for commercial flight (Qantas was using it for maintenance),
and it’s terminal building makes Bangalore’s old airport seem too luxurious. I
understand why budget airlines flock to secondary airports, but the usual
advantage of these is their proximity to the city, not their complete
isolation. Within two km from leaving Avalon airport, I felt totally lost amidst
some farmland, with nary a wave of light from the airport we had just left
behind.
= Overall, spend more time in Sydney, not less. When I first
found out that my Tuesday reef diving tour in Cairns was cancelled, I quickly
did some accounting to see if I would be better off not going to Cairns and
staying two extra days in Melbourne. Looking back, I would have picked those
two extras days in Sydney instead (although not even the crooked accountants on
Wall Street could have legitimized that switch). My one regret from my time in
Sydney isn’t a real one, but that I didn’t really get to experience too many of
Sydney’s restaurants, because my restaurants were either at the homes of
family, in expensive tourist destinations (harbor cruise, Sydney Tower) or in
chain restaurants trying to make up for the high price of the meals at the
tourist destinations. Still, I enjoyed my time in Sydney far more than I
expected.
= More about that, my expectations in Sydney were lessened
more from ignorance. I didn’t really know what to expect, and I was blown away.
It is a modern city that would not be lost in any country in the world. It will
definitely have a spot in my updated Top 20 Cities list that I do when I return
to India in three weeks.
