Current mood:

sleepy

Jet Lag Here I come
Well I made it through the first day in Sydney. I took a 2.5 hour harbor ferry tour which was lovely and I have a bunch of great photos from it. I wandered around Circular Quay and the Rocks and have already found a few things to send back home. I picked up a ticket to the Opera at the Sydney Opera House for tomorrow night. I'm glad now that I didn't get one for tonight as I initially thought because I'm dead tired right now and I'm here online to try to keep myself awake another hour or so before I finally succumb to sleep.

The ticket btw is for the FRONT ROW. The Opera House is doing something I've always said theaters in the US should do - the front rows traditionally are sold as best seats in the house but really they aren't. My front row seat isn't the best seat in the house - and it isn't priced as one which is great. Even better the opera is going to be in english. It's Orpheus in the Underworld.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to the zoo in the morning and then I think wander around the botanical gardens after that and then head back to the hostel to take a quick shower before going back to Circular Quay for the show. I'm sure other things will come up as I go as well.

I also found a beautiful opal necklace today but I wasn't willing to pay $212 without looking around to see if I find anything quite as nice. But it was in this lovely little shop overlooking Circular Quay. The shop owner, Jackie was very nice and explained all kinds of great info on opals and rating them and which are more available (the white and crystal ones) vs the ones very hard to find - the Black Opal - and why. How there are doublets (a slice of opal backed with black) and triplets, a slice of opal backed with black and covered with a clear dome). The necklace of course is a solid black opal. Very simple and elegant and lovely.

I had such a great time btw just buying an opera ticket. It's hard to believe I'm here - except for this OVERWHELMING exhaustion. I think I might have to give up the ghost and go get my stuff out of hock (in a locker at the hostel) and check in - well get my key - I checked in earlier but couldn't get into the room until after 12:00 pm so to be sure I had a bed I went ahead and paid this morning before heading out.

Got a great pass today (yeah I know I'm totally disjointed here) - it's called the Sydney Pass - it's a 3 day pass and was A$90. It allows you to use all the city buses, trains and ferries unlimited for 3 days. In addition it allows you to take these hop on hop off busses called Sydney Explorer that loop around the city and stop at key locations, also lets you get on Harbor Cruise Ferries and other Explorer busses and the airport shuttle. It cost me A$10 to get from the Airport to Central Train station (which is across from the YHA I'm in), I wish I'd bought the pass right off. But I've already used it on Sydney Explorer (normally A$30 a day) on the 2.5 hour PM Harbor Cruise (normally A$15) we can say including the return to the airport that I know is A$10 that's already $55. Now I'm also going to use it to get back to Circular Quay tomorrow for the ferry to the zoo and back to the hostel and back out to Circular Quay for the Opera, the pass will have paid for itself by tomorrow and I'll still have a 3rd day of unlimited usage on it.

OK I'm toast I have to crawl next door and check in. I'll probably be updating and checking email at least briefly every day while in Sydney since there are 2 internet cafes on either side of the hostel and it's pretty cheap. Don't get used to it I have no idea how connected I'll be once I leave Auckland in NZ!

ps A reference for how tired I am - I know that Aussie is 16 hrs ahead of Boston but when I was logging in I couldn't figure out why none of my Boston local folks were on AIM or Y!M. Well that's because they are 16 hours BEHIND Me and I was figuring that it was 10am in Boston because I was going forward, not going backward! So it's 2am and of course they're all asleep. Silly me. Nite nite!