13th - Balls! (Sunday)

I took Sydney’s west side today. A good walk around ended me back in Darling Harbour. After lunch I walked around a little and ended up in the middle of a market at the Rocks. A lot of weird tourist stuff, but maybe it’s just because I am a tourist but it wasn’t as crappy as such tourist stuff usually is. Oh, well – nothing bought; I’ll have plenty of chances in the near future.

Because a rabbit's foot is so last year...

I went up in Sydney Tower – the highest accessible place in the city. Nice view, got an alternate look at the city.

I had dinner at an Indian (Indian as “Hello, this is customer support”, not “Bless Manitou for the bison!”) restaurant at Circular Quay. Really nice food, actually better than expected – it was not simple tourist food, but actually genuine quality. And not because of their waitresses – not this time. He was small, happy and chubby, and a helper (his son?) was tall and skinny. No girls this time. Damnit. Not that they could have been as cute as my waitress yesterday, but they could at least have tried…

13th - Feuer! (Saturday)

I wandered around in Sydney to found a new pair of shoes. After a lot of searching I finally found a pair I could live with. Spent way too much time on doing that. Also, I found a Telstra prepaid SIM card. Ready to put it in my phone I opened the pack, but realized that I needed to activate the subscription online. And the hotel net is down. Hurray? So I went to Sydney’s customer information and borrowed their net. I needed to enter my address (but why? The woman at Woolworths where I bought the card already entered my home address), but it refused my Danish address (which wasn’t a problem at Woolworths). So I entered my hotel’s address, but that failed too no matter how I entered it. And suddenly it said the registration had been locked due to too many failed attempts to activation. So the only way to do so is to call them… “Activate your phone by calling us”. Huh? I refuse to use my Danish number to call them, that’ll be expensive. So I ended up sending them a mail telling them of my opinion. I have no idea how they’ll react until I get access to some working internet.

After that I took a walk in the eastern Sydney and I came by King’s Cross. Nearby there was a plaza where the trees and light posts were dressed. I didn’t figure out why they were dressed, but it was quite funny-looking. Weird.

I ended up for dinner at a restaurant called Sienna Marina. Nice restaurant, good food and some cute waitresses – especially mine. Damn. The waitresses were worth the visit, but the food wasn’t disappointing, either. Maybe to the slight expensive side, but that was understandable. The restaurant is highly recommended – and not only because of my waitress. It’s located by the bay in Woolloomooloo. Yes, there’s an area/suburb in Sydney called Woolloomooloo, and it doesn’t even get caught by the spell check. Isn’t that awesome?

On my way home from dinner tonight I was thinking of the fact that while I have been in Sydney, I have seen more fire trucks on their way to jobs than police cars. Guess what hotel there where two fire trucks parked at? Yup – I stood outside together with the other guests looking up at the hotel, but after a couple of minutes we were allowed inside again. A little excitement is always nice, but then again, it can be overdone…

13th - WIP (Saturday morning)

The internet supplier is working on solving the problem with the wireless internet (or rather lack of it). Apparently a defective router is the source of the problems. The same excuse we get at the office when we lose the net. What it basically means is “We have no idea what the problem is but we’re looking into the issue whenever we have time.”

Getting a new pair of shoes today. I really need them if it continues raining. My current shoes are like sandals – but less waterproof.

13th - LPO unplugged (Friday)

Rain. Rain never changes.

It’s been pissing with rain most of the day today. Combine that with shoes that aren’t waterproof (a few too many holes…) and the result is not impressive.

I went to the fish market today and it was actually quite interesting. It was fun walking around looking at the booths with loads of fresh fish. I ended up having an early lunch; a Lobster Platter. Half a lobster covered in mornay sauce, two oysters with bacon (cooked together), two oysters with mornay sauce (the shells were filled with mornay and cooked. Think about how little space the actual oyster takes up in the shell, and mornay was used to top off the shells), 4 huge prawns, plenty of small octopuses, octopus rings and chips. Plenty of food for two, so I didn’t have much problem eating most of it myself. But what was up with all that mornay sauce?!

When I left it had begun raining. I went back to the hotel to get some dry clothes and ready for the evening when I was going to the concert at the Opera House with London Philharmonic Orchestra. Of cause the internet didn’t work yet.

The concert was actually quite good. I don’t know much about classical music, but I was entertained in the entire process.

Not bad, not bad at all.

13th - Sydney by night (Thursday)

Today I went to Taronga Zoo, but it wasn’t what I had expected. Of cause, you won’t see a tourist brochure saying “this zoo is kinda average, nothing special, but come and see anyway!”, but I had hoped for more considering how positive various sources had been about it.

It wasn’t until I came back from the zoo the day’s real fun started; I went on a tour in the Opera House which was actually quite interesting. Curse the international copyrighting laws from not letting us take photos of the theater halls, but there wasn’t much to do about that.

After that I went for dinner at a place called “Pancakes on The Rocks”. Most of the dishes the restaurant serves has something to do with pancakes, and it’s located in an area near Circular Quay called The Rocks (hence the name, it’s not because you get ice cubes together with your pancakes). It wasn’t bad at all – I’m seriously considering going there again before I leave the city. After that my hunt went out to get photos of the opera house in the dark. A few of the photos can be seen below. When taking into consideration I don’t have a tripod I’m pretty impressed with the photos. But see for yourselves and let me know what you think.

12th - Service announcement

The internet is fucked at the hotel - it has been so since Thursday evening, and it doesn't seem like the internet suppliers are doing much to restore the connection. I was told Friday afternoon that they had figured out it was a problem with a router (wow! It took me less than 5 minutes with a command prompt to reach the same conclusion!), but actually doing something about it seems to take a little longer. Apparently it's difficult to change a router. It's almost like being at work...

I am writing updates for every day, so when I finally get my netbook online again there'll be plenty to read. Until then please have patience.

7th - Sydney's Aquarium and Wild Life World

Vegemite tastes awful. It’s basically a paste created from whatever’s left of the yeast when brewing bear. It smells just as bad, which should have been a fair warning. And the taste stays with you. And it was just a very small amount on a corner of a toast… I was even told about it before I left for Australia. But you probably then ask “But Jakob, you who are so clever, intelligent, handsome and whom we look so much up to, why did you try it when you knew it is crap?” I’d say that everything should be tested, even though I have been warned. Can’t have an opinion about something I haven’t tested yet. Let us just say I got a little smarter today.

Oh, well.

Went to Sydney’s aquarium in the morning. If it hadn’t been because of the aforementioned platypuses (platypi?) it would had been like many other aquariums. They had two pipes to walk around in through two different aquariums; one with sharks, and one with two dugongs. They were pretty nice, but it seemed a little overrated.

The two dugongs feeding on the salad thrown down to them with regular intervals.

Afterwards I ended up in Sydney Wild Life World just next door. That wasn’t part of the plan, but their focus on the Australian wildlife sounded interesting. There were interesting snakes, insects, lizards and other interesting venomous animals. And koalas, two groups of them. I think the first group I saw consisted of something else considering they were running up and down their trees and constantly bustling around. The second group were just sitting still, sleeping and looking around. Much more koala-like.

A very koala-like koala. Just as we know them.

The weather wasn’t as good as expected, so I picked up a new EU-AUS electrical plug converter before I went back to the hotel and got some more clothes before going to dinner. Morning looked nice and inviting, but it got colder and windier before it began raining later afternoon so it didn’t really invite for a walk around town. I’m looking forward to the heat. Where is it?

Weird seing such colorful birds in the open in freedom and not just in a zoo.