G'Day! As in, when a Aussie man introduced himself to Richard and said "G'day", Richard said "Gary? Which led to a rather confusing exchange. We have since picked up on the G'day usage.
Anyway, just wanted to give everyone a quick trip update, because I am sure that you are all sitting around curious about what we are doing. Or, you may be finding out why we haven’t returned any phone calls in the last several days.
We took a quick 14 hour flight to Sydney from LAX. Fortunately United Airlines does not have tv screens or outlets on their planes, so we didn’t have the inconvenience of watching movies on the plane. They do have glass wine bottles that they give out. So, if you’re scoring at home, razor blades are not allowed, but 6 inch high glass bottles are allowed.
Sydney is a beautiful, vibrant city. The weather has been perfect - warm, but not too hot. That morning we walked across the harbor bridge, which affords an excellent view of the harbor. On the other side we went to a small farmers market and had a traditional Australian cheese and bread combination called a “Quesadilla.” Then we visited the famous "Bondi Beach". It's a stunning beach, but Richard was offended by all of the topless women.
Later we went to a Sydney Kings basketball game. We got comped tickets and got to hang out in “Sir Elton John’s Room,” which has a silk suit and unlimited beer - the good stuff, not Fosters... in fact, you won't find Foster anywhere in Australia -- if you go into a pub and ask for Fosters they look at you funny... sorry all of you people who told us to "have a Fosters" for you. We'll have some Toohey New instead though. We being Richard.
The Wollongong Hawks brought the entire city of Wollongong to cheer on the game. They cheer like an American Football college student section. Each team is allowed two “import players,” which, as they proudly tell you are the two African Americans on the floor. (They don’t say African American, but this is a PC update) (side note, they tell you this, as if you can’t figure out that the two guys who are way better than everyone else are not Australian. One guy on our team had about 700 blocked shots)
The next day we went on a tour of the Blue Mountains. Australia is a flat country, so their version of a mountain is about 3,000 feet high. We took an amazing hike around the ridge of the mountains and stood on a ledge about 1,000 feet above the valley floor. We hiked to an unbelievable waterfall (Katoomba Falls) which landed on a ledge hundreds of feet above the valley floor and had unreal views for miles. After that we tracked down wild kangaroos and saw a pregnant kangaroo and a joey. (Beth did seem jealous that the Kangaroo was pregnant. Also, the 35 day gestation period is quite desirable. Downsides include being stalked by tourists and having to eat grass all day).
After that we drove to a wharf to take a ferry back. We missed the ferry, so we were stuck there for over an hour. However, this happened to be the wharf that the Jay-Z/U2 concert was docking at, so naturally, Jay-Z and Beyonce drove up in the crappiest boat we saw all day and walked right by us. Beth claims to know who Jay Z and Beyonce are, but I am not convinced.
This morning, after some crumpets (or "strumpets" as Richard seems to think they're called) and Nutella, we left our hotel and are flying to Cairns to go snorkeling on the reef.
A few pics attached... will post them all when we get back.
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