First of all, I have to say these Aussies have their customs act together! The only person I talked to during the whole process was an officer who asked me about my bike while I was waiting for my luggage ( I declared it on my customs form). Once satisfied, he stamped my form and I collected my luggage and off I went. It was entirely automated! A piece of cake. After having stood in many customs lines at various places in the world, I was seriously impressed!
It had been a long day so I grabbed a bite at a place near my hotel and settled in for the night. I went to sleep thinking that I would just take it easy today – that didn’t quite work out!
My hotel is in an area called The Rocks which is near the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I knew it was going to be warm today so I decided to take a little exploratory walk early. One thing led to another and before long I was walking across the Sydney Harbor Bridge! Great views.
When I returned I decided that one of Sydney’s “hop on/ hop off” busses was the way to cover a lot of ground. Once again, one thing led to other and I found myself at the famous Bondi Beach. I walked around for a while and was contemplating what to do about lunch when I stumbled upon one of the local surf rescue groups having a fund raising BBQ. It seemed like a better way to spend money rather than at one of the local tourist restaurants so I grabbed a snack there.
I jumped back on the bus and finished he loop around the city. Once back to where I started, I jumped on a boat for an hour long cruise around the harbor. Upon returning from that, in spite of sunscreen, hat, etc. I’d spent so much time in the sun I felt like a baked potato so I found a nice cool restaurant and had my first real sit down meal of the day – at about 4pm.
The nice thing about the hop-on/hop-off bus tour was that it allowed me to scope out a lot of the areas and sights relatively quickly so now I have a really good idea where I will go tomorrow. And most of the places I want to go are within a mile or two so I’ll probably just take a walk and then if I get tired or sunbaked, I’ll jump on the bus. I have to save a little bit of energy since the day after that I’m suppose to climb to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge! As I vividly recall, when I was recently in New Zealand and I climbed up something high, I had to jump off into the water – hopefully that’s not the same drill here! 😃