First Semester is Officially Done!

As of this week I am on vacation and can become a full blown tourist until August when second semester starts up.  It was a pretty challenging semester as I tried to gain my bearings in a new city, surrounded by new people with different accents, and studying a completely different subject.  I don't think I have ever written so much.   In fact, I would venture to say that the sum of all my assignments in my undergrad is still less than what I did this semester in terms of word count.  Overall, it is just a completely different experience.  But, I am loving it so far!

To celebrate my new found freedom and to de-stress a little bit, I did a couple of fun things this week.  I started by taking a nice walk on Monday from Bondi Beach to Watson's Beach.  We met at the pavillion at about 4:15pm and started walking north.  Contrary to what I expected we mostly took residential streets up to different look outs along the coast.  So there wasn't a stunning view the entire time like there would have been if we head south towards Coogee.  Actually, we couldn't see all that well anyways because the sun now sets at about 5:00pm or shortly thereafter because it is winter.  So we did the majority of the walk in the dark by the light of our smart phones.  It seemed like an odd choice to me to start the walk so late knowing full well that it would be dark by the time we even got a third of the way, but it was an experience.  Because of this, I also struggled to get any good pictures of the nature and coast we saw.  It was kind of funny that the host of the walk kept saying that this beach or that trail is beautiful and we would take a picture when it was pitch black.  But, I appreciated the sentiment.  I am determined to go back during daylight to check out those great views.  We walked through the Rodney Reserve, and past the Dudley Page Reserve just as the sun was setting.  From the Rodney Reserve we were able to see a splash or two from a whale, but it disappeared just as quickly as we spotted it.  From the Dudley Page Reserve there was a great view of the Sydney skyline.

Just picture a whale in the water,.  No not there, maybe a little more to the right..

We also walked past the Macquarie lighthouse, then up towards the Gap.  The Gap is a very popular bluff and has been recommended to me a couple of times, so I am glad to have seen it, even if I didn't get the full effect.  Next we headed to another recommended area, Camp Cove.  It is a very cute little beach and there was a photography group there taking pictures of a man whirling some sort of sparkler in a circle.  I wasn't quick enough on the draw to catch a picture of that.  I must say, overall on the walk, I was not very successful at taking nice pictures. It was pleasant company and conversation instead.  Originally we had six people on the walk, though a couple jumped ship when the sun set.  So we were only four for the rest.  There was someone from Australia, Germany and the UK and we all got along quite well, even after we tried doing each other's accents...  From Camp Cove we walked up to another lighthouse called Hornby Lighthouse on South Head (I'll admit it, I have a map opened next to me just to make sure I am getting all of this right - on these walks I usually just follow aimlessly!)

Hornby Lighthouse

The lighthouse was our last stop before before calling it quits.  We headed back to the road and from there divided into two groups.  I was able to convince one person to come with me to take the ferry back to Circular Quay for a little loop of Vivid Sydney.  The other two took the bus home.  The ferry wasn't coming for another 45 minutes, so we waited in a seafood restaurant called Doyles on the Beach.  They had really good calamari which I ordered, and the octopus that Eliza ordered also looked very good, and so did all of the dishes that walked by.  It was a great location right on the beach and we were able to get a window seat and could see the wharf from where we were, just in case we needed to make a run for it.   The ferry only came once every hour, so we couldn't chance missing it.  Luckily we made it with a few minutes to spare and even paid our bills.  The ferry took about twenty minutes to get to Circular Quay in Sydney Harbour.  It gave us the perfect view as it docks between Darling Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House, so we saw both lit up for Vivid Sydney on either side.  Plus we didn't have to contend with thousands of people.  There were only four other people on the open top level of the ferry.

Port side

Starboard Side

Looking out the back of the boat right as we docked.

We walked around to see the Sydney Opera House as the shapes and colours that were projected on it changed.  We also walked in the Royal Botanical Gardens.  This was my second attempt to see the Gardens and luckily there were a lot fewer people and could manage to walk through the exhibit with minimal pushing.  There were a lot of things that I missed when I went through last time because I was feeling so overwhelmed by people that I only had my sights on the exits.  This time I saw:

Those kiwi birds were very cool and even had sounds to go with them.  I did not care for the eyeballs.  There were about eight of them sticking out of the ground and they were shifty.  The eyes kept darting around as if they were watching something.   It was just a little too sinister for my taste. After the Gardens, we walked to one last Vivid Sydney sight.  At Martin's Place, there were a lot of beautiful lights, but the highlight was a piano that anyone could walk up to and play.

The piano was made to look just like these pillars, but I thought it might be creepy to take a picture of the stranger playing.  Only now am I realising that there are many more strangers in this photo.

The guy that was playing was really good and played about three songs, I remember one of them was Grenade by Bruno Mars, but I can't recall any others.  After those songs he started to head off to the girl he was with, but she told him to keep playing.  I guess he had already exhausted most of his repertoire, so he ended up playing some Christmas songs.  We all liked it just the same.  The acoustics were really good on this piano and it was a fun atmosphere.  But, it was pretty late so I called it a night and headed home.

Then, on Wednesday, I decided to check out the Sydney Tower Eye.   From the observation deck you can see the whole of Sydney.  Before you got up to the observation deck, they had a five minute 4D movie celebrating quintessential Sydney things like surfing and sailing.  The floors shook in time with the movie and for the underwater parts bubbles were blown into the audience.  It was a really well done film.  I went to the Tower Eye in the late afternoon so that I could see the sunset over the city and also catch some of Vivid Sydney from above.  This is the best time if you ask me, and a bunch of other people too, because it is the most popular time.  But, Wednesday wasn't too bad for crowds. It's not much of a story because I went by myself and just looked out over the land and water, so here are the pictures to speak for themselves:

  
 

It was a gorgeous view, and a must do for anyone visiting Sydney.  You know those pictures that they force you to take before entering any attraction so that they can pressure into buying it afterwards? Well I completely caved and bought the overpriced book they were pushing.  This is the main reason why:

I had to have this picture in my life. I can't look at it without a smile.

Magic.  I survived the giant koala attack and since I was out already, I went to see another area of Vivid Sydney before it closes on Saturday.  I headed over to Darling Harbour after that to see the lights there.

They had a really cool water/light show spraying water  high up into the air and projecting strobe lights and different images onto the mist.  It was set to music and overall really beautiful.  I did take a video of it on my phone, but can't seem to get it onto the blog; if you are heartbroken by that news, feel free to ask me about it next time you see me and I'll show it to you.  After a little wander around the harbour, I made my way home.