Australia

6am last Sunday: I stood on the front top deck of the ship watching as we passed through the two heads into Sydney Harbor. The sun was that brilliant bright color that can only be experienced just after sun rise. It sparkled off the water and glinted off the lighthouse on the South Head. We rounded the corner and caught our first glimpse of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge. There it was -- we were officially in Sydney, Australia. The Australian students are jumping out of their skin as they see a few friends and family standing on the shore waving us in. A cockatoo flies right in front of the ship as we sail by the Opera House just before we pass under the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Wow, what a welcome to Sydney!

Before we arrived Australia was feeling big and overwhelming to me. There is so much to do, so much to see, where do you start? Once we arrived I recognized that some of my anxiety stemmed from feeling the pressure to “see and do it all”. I also realized that that is not what I wanted to do – there was nothing that really jumped out at me as something I HAD to do while in Australia, I wasn’t feeling compelled to spend loads of money and I needed some down time after our stressfully short trip from NZ to Oz. So I decided to just take it slow and enjoy Sydney.

My highlights in Australia? – Two that stand out to me. First – THE BEACH! I made it to the beach for the first time this entire voyage. On our second day here a couple of students and I headed to Bondi Beach – a very famous city beach in Sydney. We didn’t do anything but lie on the beach, eat lunch at a nice café and walk some of the coastal walk trail. It was just what I needed. The beach felt so good to me that I decided to go to another beach the next day. This time I went with the PR officer on the ship – Ashley. We took a 20 minute ferry ride over to Manly Beach. Manly was smaller than Bondi and had a very comfortable, small beach town feel. Again we just lounged on the beach and ate pizza. The beaches in Sydney were very nice, the air temperature and the sun were perfect, but the water was VERY cold. It is spring in Australia right now and the water temperature was probably comparable to the water temperature in NJ in late May or early June – take your breathe away kind of cold.

My second highlight? Dinner at a student’s family’s house in the suburbs on our first night. Caitlin is one of the Australian students on the ship – she is my neighbor on the ship, we both take the pilates class every day while we are sailing and we hung out a bit together in NZ. She is a law student at Macquarie University in Sydney and her family lives about 45 minutes outside of Sydney. She decided to invite a number of us from the ship to her house for dinner on the day we arrived. There were about 13 of us that headed out to the burbs for a BBQ.

Caitlin’s family was great – they were warm and welcoming to all of us. It wasn’t until we were all there that it hit us how nice it was to be in a home – with couches and pets, and a back yard and a comfortable floor and a home cooked meal. The meal – that was the best – we barely talked as we ate sausages, chicken satay, au gratin potatoes and real salad with all kinds of yummy veggies. I think we were quite a funny site marveling in the yumminess of it all – sighing and savoring every bite. You’d have thought we had just returned from living in the wilderness for months. For dessert her mom made homemade Pavlova – a traditional dessert made of a baked meringue shell filled with a whipped cream-like topping and fruit. It was fantastic. It all felt so comfortable and, well….homey.

Don’t get me wrong – the ship is home to us, but it’s far from the same feel as a real house. We don’t have comfy couches for lounging, we don’t have pets wandering about, we don’t have normal home smells like fresh laundry & food cooking, I don’t walk out of my cabin with my pajamas on or without thinking about if my hair looks presentable. It has been over three months since I had a home cooked meal or cooked something for myself. Dinner at Caitlin’s was a welcome taste of a home and all of the comfortable and familiar things that go along with that.

The rest of my time in Sydney entailed being a tourist – touring in the Hop on hop off bus, riding to the top of Sydney Tower for a fantastic view of the entire city, visiting the Chinese Gardens, strolling through Darling Harbor, walking through the beautiful Queen Victoria Building that is the most elegant shopping center I’ve ever visited, and shopping at the Rocks outdoor market. I also joined one of our Academic Field Program groups on the day they traveled to wine country in Hunter Valley. It was about a 2 ½ hour drive outside of Sydney. We had a wine tasting at Lindeman’s Winery, a fabulous lunch at an Irish Pub and then we toured the Hunter Valley Gardens. I’m not a huge garden fan but these gardens were beautiful.

All in all I had a nice visit in Sydney. As I write this and think back to my recent posts I feel like they have been generally uninspired recently. Just a tally of the things I did, sites I saw and which touristy things I enjoyed most. This voyage seems so different from my last. I don’t feel like I have the same passion and excitement about the places we are visiting or the sites I’m seeing. I’ve recently been contemplating why it feels so different this time around. I’m starting to formulate some answers and want to share my thoughts….in another post, on another day….stay tuned….