Sydney & the Blue Mountains
Link: version francaise
After coming back from Tahiti, we looked into the next destination. I advocated Greece, but Celine convinced me that Australia was a better option. We found a reasonable air ticket and a good housing deal: a nice and very original little house in the middle of Surry Hill, one of the hippest quarter of Sydney. Australia is great. We loved Sydney, where we stayed 3 weeks. Plenty of time to discover the city, even though Anaïs imposed a fairly restrictive schedule on us. But we were ready for it, and this went well with the secondary purpose of these vacations: get some rest. So we were rarely out before noon, and never back after six. We saw the Sydney city, Opera House (from the outside and the inside), Circular Quay, the Taronga zoo, the Rocks, did some shopping, saw the Sydney tower, the Australian Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of New South Wales, the Sydney cathedral, the Marine Museum, Darling Harbour, the Aquarium, the new Wildlife center, did some more shopping, went to a few restaurants, and so on... There's a companion page here with the best pictures from our trip.
Food wise, Sydney is a paradise. At least, when coming from the US. Food is generally excellent, tasty, and varied. We had western food, but also Italian, Thai, Indian, Mediterranean and Nepalese food. Restaurants are on the expensive side, though, as many things in Sydney -somewhat more expensive than Hawaii, which is already considered as one of the most expensive states in the US. Another goodies: you won't find garlic in every other plate, which is a blessing when you're French and coming from the US, where garlic is way overused.
Other reasons to love Australia include: people are *really* nice; they are environment friendly (unlike hawaii, they recycle); they use the metric system; and they spell harbour correctly. On the other hand, they have freaking gigantic spiders. And snakes. Some of the most venomous things on earth. Ugh.
Originally, we wanted to rent a motorhome (camping car) during the second half of our trip. We eventually decided against this, and extended our stay in town. However, we still wanted to go out a bit and see the countryside. So we rented a car and spent four days in the blue mountains, a mountain range a couple of hours off Sydney. That was great too. We visited the Jenolan caves, a "cool" extension of the Sydney Botanical Gardens, and walked along and below the rim of the high cliffs of the Jameson valley (a sort of grand Canyon, but 5 times smaller). We spotted a couple of kangaroos (alive) and 6 or 7 wombats (dead on the side of the road), and a dragon (sort of big spiky lizard). There are pictures of these -except the dead wombats- on our Sydney photo gallery.
Anaïs loved the trip. We stayed at the house in Sydney a few times throughout the day, thinking that a bit of rest would do her some good, but each time she was fussy during the day, complaining, and we had to go out -even briefly- to soothe her. She has seen as much of Sydney as us, as most of the time I (Francois) carried her in the baby carrier, facing forward. She was very attentive and tried to charm all the passersby. We have been regularly stopped by people who wanted to tell us how beautiful she was. That was kinda flattering for me (Francois) as she attracted mostly female eyes, and I got to hear many women exclaiming "how cute!" while looking at me.
G'day mate.
For the Anaïs aficionados (i.e. mostly the close family): here are two little movies (Anaïs speaking and laughing). They're AVI, and about 5-7MB large.
