Monday!

Manly, where we're staying, is just north across the harbor from Sydney, so we'll start each day with a ferry trip into the city. The city skyline is beautiful, but would probably be even more amazing if we didn't come from Seattle, which looks a lot like this.

Sydney Centrepointe Tower - we'll go up to the observation deck tomorrow if the weather is nice.

The downtown area is very quaint and has a definite European feel, aided by the huge public transportation system they have. Today we hit it all, taking the ferries, buses and trains. The one oddity of the system seems to be that they spent so much on the infrastructure itself that they appear to have had no money left to print any schedules or route information for the buses, nor did they actually have budget to train any staff member within the Sydney limits to help riders find any information at all. Think we're joking? We spent over an hour today being sent on a wild goose chase by no less than 7 transit system employees just trying to get a simple timetable. We even went into the bus office where we were told "um, I think they used to print something like that but I don't think they do anymore..."

This is Central Station in Sydney, a major hub for trains and buses. Incidentally, this is the area we wander around forever in search of bus info...

There is water everywhere in Sydney. Circular Quay, in the middle of downtown right on the harbor, has not only a train station and bus terminal, but a large ferry terminal with 6 wharfs where you can catch a ferry to many different points in the several harbors in the city. This was the view from the ferry terminal outside the Birkenhead outlet mall we checked out this afternoon (yes, we flew halfway around the world and went outlet shopping...)

Jenn checking out dinner options on the ferry after shopping - we love our Let's Go guide!

(P.S. this is what happens when Lynette gets the camera...)

(P.P.S. We ended up eating at an Austrian restaurant in The Rocks neighborhood of Sydney. It was awesome.)

Beautiful sunset from the ferry. The lovely dark clouds soon brought a rainstorm complete with thunder and lightning as we were walking around in downtown Sydney after dinner.

The Harbor Bridge at night - the ferry was rocking quite a bit as the harbor was rough but you can see how pretty it is lit up nonetheless



A few things we realized today:
1. Everyone here is SO INCREDIBLY NICE. Seriously. You ask someone working somewhere a question, not just about their job/store/etc but, say, where the nearest rail station is, or if they know which bus to take to the cinema or anything at all and they go out of their way to show you where to go or what to do. If you stop to look at a route map in the subway multiple Australians will come up to you and ask if you need help finding something. Have a problem like when the guy who sold us our travel passes gave us wrong info that caused us to buy the wrong pass? No problem, the customer service rep on the phone and the manager at the ticket place will both apologize profusely and thank you for bringing the issue to their attention so they can correct it for future customers

2. There is SO MUCH fast food here. We saw way more McDonald's today that you'd ever see in your normal daily travels through Seattle. Add to that all the Subways and Burger Kings (which, for reasons unknown, are called Hungry Jack's here...sign's the same, they server the Whopper, but it's Hungry Jack's) and it is truly an epidemic.

3. American accents sound as funny to Australians as Australian accents sound to Americans. The bus driver on our way to Birkenhead Point today actually started laughing (not chuckling lightly, but laughing) when I (Jenn) asked him if he could announce the stop since we didn't know that we'd know it when we saw it. When he started laughing and I asked if I mispronounced the name. He said "no, you got it right, I just wasn't expecting that accent when you started talking." Who knew?