Or should I say, on the plane again.
Yesterday’s day at home was thoroughly enjoyed, particularly my evening of port, Turkish delight chocolate, masterchef, the heater and an electric blanket – ah, winter pleasures. Somehow, after only sleeping a few hours on the plane I managed to stay up until past midnight – don’t know where that energy came from!
It was an odd day though – after spending two weeks spending only the very smallest amounts of time by myself, a whole day and night alone took a bit to get used to! Oh well, it wasn’t going to last for very long anyway.
Up at 10am this morning, nice and late, but somehow not late enough. Franziska arrived and off we went to the airport. A very easy airport check in, no passports, nice airport food.
The plane trip to Sydney was also very easy – somehow an hour and a half Jetstar flight seems like luxury. But where was my free food and wine? Perhaps I got a little spoilt from all my international travels. Our bags somehow came out almost first, and we were down at the train station pretty quickly.
I really had no idea where I was going, but I was enjoying wandering around reading the easy to follow English signs and Franziska followed me faithfully around. After two trains and many flights of stairs we got the the YHA in The Rocks.
I’m not really sure what I think of this place – location wise it is great, and it has a view of both the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from the rooftop lounge. It is divided into ‘wings’ though, is all white and feels incredibly like a hospital. Our room is plain but clean – there is only one queen bed, so I gave that to Franzi and took the mattress in the corner!
It was about 5pm at this point, and after chilling in the room for half an hour we headed out for the long walk to the Capitol Theatre – I just said our hostel was in a great location, well, perhaps not for this. The walk down George St. took about half an hour, with Franzi doing perfectly fine power walking in heels! She was also fascinated by how many Asians and different looking people there were and kept commenting how weird it was to see Asians smoking.
And then – Mary Poppins! I was so ridiculously excited about this, it was easily the thing I was looking forward to most on the whole trip. I certainly wasn’t disappointed, in fact, I’m not sure I can express just how much I enjoyed the show. Our seats were great, Row C in the middle, the sets were fabulous, the costumes were great, the music was infectious…and yay for the tap dancing chimney sweeps! Such a happy, fun musical. I was also a little bit excited that Philip Quast was in it (he was always my favourite play school presenter and a wonderful Javert),
We had bought the VIP packages to get good front seats, so Franzi and I enjoyed our free drink (rum punch!) and icecream in the interval. I gave Franzi the free program and had to buy one for myself of course.
Such a great night, I left the theatre on such a high. Wow at how much I’d love to come back for a weekend and see Hairspray now.
A bite to eat on the walk home. I have been so diligently avoiding Western food for two weeks and I figured I was finally able to let this go. The meant one thing: McDonalds. There was a funny moment where Franzi tried to order chicken nuggets with sour cream (?? The guy behind the counter was confused). We also happily argued over whether Fanta should be yellow or orange.
Back to the hostel about 10pm to discover that both Franzi and I have forgotten our toothbrushes:)
This trip is already so different from my recent one around Asia. For starers, I’m rugged up with jacket, scarf and gloves. This culture is familiar – familiar food, familiar money - familiar toilets! Also no passports or heightened paranoia about my belongings. The oddest thing is perhaps having my iPhone back – constant access to internet whilst travelling seems bizarre. I didn’t have this back in my 2008 trip to Sydney either… a bit of a new experience really.
Tomorrow we conquer the bridge!
(P.S. Links to photos are still in the top right corner).
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