Phew, what a week. It feels like I just left, and now I’m back home again. For those of you who don’t know I’ve been gone for Spring Break. I spent four nights in Sydney and three nights in Cairns. My face feels like leather, my clothes smell like salt, and I have lots of pictures to show!
Okay, so I left Friday morning, the 21st, for Sydney. Flight went smoothly, landed around 10:30. I spent the day wandering the streets and looking at sights. The very first thing I took a picture of…was Master Chief. Here’s how it went down:
One of the girls I was with: Does anybody else see that robot?
Me: Huh?
Me: *turns head*
Me: *eyes light up*
Me: Oh that’s no robot!
Me: *runs over to Master Chief as he boards a bus*
Me: Hey Master Chief!
Master Chief: *slowly turns around to face me*
Me: Smile! *click*
It was random and awesome. The suit was well constructed.
Afterwards I went to see the Sydney Opera House in all its glory. It’s quite the engineering feat. Very impressive inside and out.
Very bizarre and very cool design.
The main performance stage.
The rest of my time in Sydney consisted of touring various things. Darling Harbor had a sidewalk chalk thing going on, and some of the art was damn good considering it’s chalk.
Impressive…most impressive.
Luna Park is an amusement park for little kiddies. I was told to go there simply to be horrified by its entrance gate. I wish I didn’t go…
This thing is going to give me nightmares
The Sydney Aquarium is pretty cool. Lotsa different fish and whatnot to see. They had some underwater tubes below the large shark aquarium that allowed you to get up close with the sharks.
ZOMG Blurry Shark!1
There was this bar called Minus 5 that was completely made out of ice. The walls, tables, chairs, bar, glasses, everything was ice. It was really cool to see. I’ll get some pictures when I can, since we couldn’t take any of our own and had to pay for some guy to take them. Lames.
Tuesday morning I left Sydney and went to Cairns. Cairns is a small touristy town that’s right close to the Great Barrier Reef. Pretty much the biggest thing I wanted to do on this trip was to go diving on the reef, and I got to do that…kinda.
Because it was an introductory dive (I’m not licensed…yet) we were only allowed about 25 minutes underwater. We were briefed on what to do, hand signals, etc. So everyone should be prepared to go and have a good time, right? WRONG! My group consisted of a guy, a girl, and myself. We all geared up and were in the water off the side of the boat. We were going to do a few underwater exercises, about 10 feet under, before looking at the fishies. Simple stuff. The instructor showed us how to do it, step by step, and we had to repeat. The girl in the group, though, would panic everytime something would go “wrong”, and would shoot up to the surface. The instructor then had to calm her down and take her back underwater. She did this FIVE FUCKING TIMES! So what should have been about 5-8 minutes of exercises ended up taking about 20 minutes…leaving literally five minutes to look at fish. I was pissed. The fish I did see, though, were neato.
Me rocking out with Nemo
I did get to snorkel as much as I wanted though, which was good. Saw some pretty awesome looking fish, and a sea turtle!
The rest of my time in Cairns consisted of relaxing on the beach and enjoying the warm weather. I arrived back in Geelong about 2 hours ago, where it’s cold, windy, and rainy. Blek.
Tomorrow’s a big day for Geelong. The AFL Grand Final is happening, and Geelong is in it. For those who don’t know, the AFL is the Australian equivalent of the NFL in the States. Though they’re two completely different sports the popularity is about the same for both. So the AFL Grand Final is the Superbowl of Australia. Geelong plays Port Adelaide, who lost to them earlier in the year, and is one of the games I went to (see previous post). This game is going to be big, and a close match. Geelong hasn’t won a Grand Final in 44 years, and lost the last 4 they’ve been in. This entire town is giddy with anticipation. If they win tomorrow, the city is going to fucking erupt in celebration for a week. I can’t wait.
September 29, 2007 at 12:32 am
Did they play that giant-looking organ in the Opera House? My god it must’ve sounded badass.
I still hate you by the way T_T
September 29, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Nah, unfortunately the stage was empty. I’m sure they had some sort of performance going on there at some point in the day. I can only imagine how sweet that thing sounds.
October 5, 2007 at 12:32 pm
aw, that would have been so badass to see! Also, that girl in your scuba group? yeah, thats what you get for being able to go…jackass! (Gale face) + T_T = something fucking disgusting.
October 6, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Oh god what would that face look like!?!
Though Justin I think you should have gotten closer to Luna Park and got a nice upwards photo of the giant face so it looked like it was looking down at you. Though you would also be scarred for life… it would be worth it.